


Hearth Keeper

by Out_Of_Custody



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AIM - Freeform, Bedford Stuyvesant, Clint's fall, Cookies, Deaf Clint, Diners, Domestic, F/M, Festive Times, Friends to Everything, Implied Physical Abuse, Landlord Clint, Mentioned Phil Coulson, Pizza, Slow Burn, Southern Darcy, The Fuzz, Thor Is Not Stupid, clever Clint, darcy and clint are lovey dovey dumdums, human disaster Clint, implied hacker!darcy, lots of swearing, lucky - Freeform, no longer an Avenger Clint, pizza dog - Freeform, political science major Darcy, poor fruit, real life can be hard, the popo, tracksuit mafia - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:25:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Out_Of_Custody/pseuds/Out_Of_Custody
Summary: It takes a long way to get where they are going when they are coming from two different directions.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [When Life Gives You Lemons](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106550) by [Codexfawkes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Codexfawkes/pseuds/Codexfawkes). 



> Fair warning though: I'm probably not going to update regularly, no matter how much I'd like to; I'm not there yet and RL takes certain priority most of the time. Sorry. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Clint is not going to say that he understands all of what Thor is saying. To be pretty damn honest most of it is going over his head; be it because the All-Speak failed to translate properly and there was no earthly equivalent to what the Warrior wanted to convey or because even if it existed in words, Clint could not really motivate his Grey Cells to figure out just _what the hell_ he meant. Instead he has gotten used to simply shrug and go with it; which is not to say that he’s not curious, because frankly he’s a nosy bastard.

So when Thor decides to stay, Clint decides that a background-check is in order – he’s not living under the same roof as a person that he knows nothing about, no matter how charming they might be – and realizes two documents in that this recon-mission might just turn out to be the most time-consuming and unconventional he’s had in a while.

Needless to say he dives in head-first.

Natasha finds him one evening bent over at least five different books regaling him with the same tale. One of the hurdles, he’s quickly found out, is that the last visit of Thor’s people has been so long ago that most of the written accounts have been lost or irreversibly damaged. Therefore his one chance to come as close to the truth as possible is to read as many texts as he can get his grubby hands on and deduct the common denominator – which is why he’s been somewhat AWOL for at least a week now.

“You could ask him.”—The Russian proposes when she sets down a pot of coffee, watching him with keen eyes as he guzzles it down.

When he sets the pot down, he gives her a meaningful look, holding down the air that bubbles up in his mouth. “When have you ever asked a target about their backstory, Tash?” he replies instead, intent on bending back over his reading material.

Her hand appears on the page. “Since when is a team-member a target?”

He looks up, tries to decipher what her eyes are trying to convey, but even with coffee his brain is too far gone – a puppy could probably kick him over right now – to find words to fit the description and so he just rubs his own eyes, cursing the reading glasses he knocks over.

“You know what I mean.”—he grumbles. “’m not sleeping in the same house as an unchecked team-member…”- _not after SHIELD_ – he doesn’t say it, but the implication is there all the same and Tash, _благослови́ вас Госпо_ _́_ _дь_ , understands.

Later that day he gets a missive that lets him know he has two more weeks of ‘vacation’ because he’s amassed enough out-time due to his Spec-Ops-SHIELD-days either way – Clint leaves a paper-crane on Hill’s desk on his way out (she’s a sucker for Origami) and dives right back into his research.

Tash is his best buddy and friend, because she continues to streamline him coffee and solid sustenance even though she never does so personally – she won’t ever degrade herself to be a coffee-girl in private, not even for a friend – and when his first week comes to an end she makes an appearance to drag him off to his bed. Granted she has to knock him out – he gets single-minded, okay? – but he makes certain she has a tray of fresh bliný waiting for her when she wakes up because he seriously needed to remember what it was like to sleep in a real bed.

By the middle of his second week he is done with his research and is rather certain, that he has all his facts straight – he sleeps through a whole day before going in search of Thor and finding the Warrior trying to learn the microwave.

“Need a hand with that?”—he asks a little gruffly, preparing his pot of coffee.

Thor looks relieved. “For as much as Asgard has evolved its devices, I must look a fool failing to handle your daily appliances.”—the crown-prince admits and Clint, even in his sleepy state smells an opening.

He shrugs. “Guessing you’ve had the equivalent of a microwave back when we had stone-hearths and animal-skin-shoes, if even, I don’t hold it against you.” He shows Thor how to heat up his Pop-Tart. “Like, if I weren’t an Archer and Spy, I guarantee you, I wouldn’t survive a day living the way we lived ages ago.”

The blonde smiles grandly. “This is why it pays brilliantly to have such dutiful friends as you.”—he agrees. “I do not doubt that without the help of My Lade Jane and _afl-hirða_ Darcy, I would have perished within the hour.”

Thor speaks a little too loud for the early hour, but Clint wills himself to tolerate the decibel. “Would you mind telling me what it was like?”—he asks after he takes his first gulp of Coffee.

Oh Sweet Nectar of the Morning Gods.

The Alien-Prince makes to grab for his Pop-Tart but Clint motions for him to wait a little – it’s still hot beyond touching right now, and while he doesn’t know how durable Thor’s skin is, he doesn’t think he wants to try. At least not now.

Clint drinks his coffee while waiting for his teammate to answer and it takes him curiously _long_ to do so.

“The Widow has told me that you have spent your last days bent over books…”—the man starts then, and his tone is something that Clint has not heard before. It is carefully void of emotion and when the Archer looks up, he finds that guarded eyes take him in over the Pop-Tart he nibbles on.

Seeing no use in denying it, Clint shrugs. “I like knowing who my teammates are and you are hard to read up on in a file, given that you’re not even really from here. So, yes, I read about a hundred books to see what I could find out about you.”

His comrade nods. “It is a wise action to take.”—he concedes, before adding with a glint in his blue eyes: “When faced with an unknown foe.” Clint does not back down, even though the stare turns into a glare. “Tell me, Archer, do you consider me a foe?”

He should be intimidated, probably, because Thor has at least two heads, magical powers and three times his shoulder width on him; but then Clint is not just an Avenger because of his looks – he’s been told, repeatedly, how handsome he is, just FYI – but because his mission-score is kind of a record and right up there with Tasha’s. He doesn’t back down from Thor’s withering glare and, instead, calmly continues to drink his coffee, his unoccupied hand finding the door of the fridge. He sets the pot down on top of it and lowers his head into the bowels of the fridge to scavenge for something edible.

“I consider you an unknown.”—he lets the man know, resurfacing with left-over Chilli. “But also a teammate.” He gives the blonde an intense look over the bowl. “We all have our dislikes, Thor, and mine is not-knowing. It’s something I’ve been bad at before the military and SHIELD, but it’s become near to impossible to handle ever since. I don’t mean it as a slight towards you.”

Quite the contrary, to be honest, because in letting the man know Clint is forfeiting an ace up his sleeve – he could have revealed his ‘secret’ knowledge any moment he’d have pleased and shock the prince, but he’s decided against this venue, because Thor is a teammate. And cloak and dagger is not a way to approach a teammate. He doesn’t know if the blonde gets it, but he doesn’t need to – not yet anyway.

Thor mulls this over, chewing the last remnants of his Pop-Tart, a second and third already warming in the micro-wave and Clint takes the opportunity to stir through the cold Chilli and grab his coffee-pot to sit down.

“You feel the _need_ to know?”—he finally asks and Clint, bent over his bowl, raises his head to give a nod, mouth full of deliciously spicy breakfast.

Something changes in the face of the man opposite of him and when his two Pop-Tarts are done, he sits down opposite of Clint, tearing into the first tart. “Will you let me know what you have found out?”

He cannot resist the smirk as he swallows. “I am dying to know if I got this right: but you had to wear a dress to get Mjolnir back once?”

The blonde groans. “Of all the glorious battle-stories and valiant heroics _this_ one made it to Midgard because it is not enough that Asgard knows and still laughs about it.”

Clint smiles largely. “Pays to have leverage.”

\---

The ‘education’ goes past the rest of the week, although they make good time all in all. Clint, for his part, learns a lot more than he bargained for.

Because Thor is not content simply letting him know about his own exploits – the books have been scarily accurate on that part as it is – but introduces him to the Warriors Three and Lady Sif, he tells him the grand stories of his lesser known brother Baldr and his wife Nanna, he takes his time about weaving Loki into the stories, aware of the personal grievances between the two of them, tells him the stories of the Nine Realms, of how Odin hung from Yggdrasil for mankind to give the gift of letters to them and about the customs of Asgard.

It occurs to Clint only a month later, when he is walked through the Flora and Fauna of Asgard that Thor must have been dying to share his stories – the Archer doesn’t mind that he’s the one to profit of this. As said before: he’s always been a nosy bastard.

\---

“I do not agree with your strategy, Man of Iron.”—Thor grouses, freeing himself from the green, slimy goo that, apparently, Dr Doom’s newest creations are made of and will disintegrate to if you microwave them. Tony has come to the conclusion that doing so is the best option.

Clint agrees silently, wiping futilely at his brow to stop The Blorb from impairing his vision – it is honestly becoming harder and harder to do because for some reason the Goo-Monsters have realized that he is somewhat stationary and therefore a prime example of a victim. He hasn’t meant to be, but because Tony went with it, he is now knee-deep in Goo and even if he wanted to, moving is somewhat hard to do.

“We’re almost done, Point-Break.”—Tony’s voice echoes flatly through their comms. “Only a few more, you stay where you are.”

He growls, sinks another microwave-arrow into a Blorb close to him; Thor wields his hammer in a grand arch and Clint guesses that it is the magic of the weapon that lets it connect with the otherwise gelatinous shapes of green. They’ve discovered early on that, whatever the Goo _is_ , it conducts like metal and frying it would only result in frying themselves, which is why Thor refrains. Thankfully.

“Forgetting the squishy down here, Stark?”—he snaps sharply; he’s fed up with Tony’s selective forgetfulness, especially when it concerns him. It happens a lot more often than it should.

“Barton!”—Tony _does_ sound surprised and a hell of a lot more cheerful than Clint would have liked for him to be. “Hang in there, buddy.”

Shooting his last arrow, he puts his hands up in surrender and gives Thor a look. “If I put frogs between his sheets, will you rat me out?”

Thor moves to throw off another Blorb and the Goo around his knees is slowly crawling up his thighs – he does _not_ like this. “I shall aid you in the procurement of said creatures.”—Thor glares hard at the closest Blorb, as if it would combust by the sheer ferocity of his look. “Though I would suggest we surprise him with _Myr-Gargan_ instead.”

His compound bow seconds as a Jo-Staff, which is why he’s busy knocking a Blorb into Goo when Thor proposes this – Clint whips around with a large smile. “They _do_ leave snail-like trails if I remember correctly.”—he says gleefully.

The prince of Asgard gives a shiny smile that is not dampened by the bright-green Goo clinging to him. “That they do, my friend.”

“Let’s do that.”—Clint agrees, whipping at another Blorb. “Or let’s do both.”

“Both is good.”

\---

Thor has not known a man such as the Archer Clinton before.

Those Midgardians around him, calling themselves The Avengers, are slightly more than just Midgardian – the commanding Captain, Friend Hulk and Banner as well as the fierce shield-maiden Black Widow are all similarly enhanced, though he will not ever mention the Widow’s part in that particular Triad, and Friend Tony deviates physically from the rest of the Midgardians. They have, during their glorious conquests, come across many other enhanced Midgardians, such as the twins Maximoff who are, despite their young age, most accomplished warriors and have found a stable supporter in Clinton and even Friend Tony has found a very young protégé going by the name of Peter who has been a great asset in several of their battles – and while Young Peter has yet a lot to learn, he has the advantage of a particular set of enhancements just as well.

And in the midst of it all, Thor has had the genuine pleasure of getting closer acquainted with Clinton who, despite the people he surrounds himself with and his impressive accuracy with a bow is what his father and brothers would call ‘a mere Midgardian’.

There is not a single thread in the man that discerns him from a peaceful dweller, except for his particularly strong will and thick head that, combined, allowed him to rise in the ranks of Archers all over Midgard until he reached his current proficiency. He has to admire the fact that there is no sorcery behind his capability, that there is no ‘science’ behind his accomplishments and Thor has come to honour the Midgardian greatly for his achievements.

When last he has been to Midgard alongside his family, there have been many capable warriors, men and women of strong hearts and minds, and some of them have risen in the esteem of their comrades due to their exploits – but even then none of them had been equal to the Archer.

While there may have been misgivings between the Midgardian and the Asgardian in regards to Loki before, Clinton has made it very clear that he would not trust Thor’s Brother – a wise decision – and he might not be able to forgive him, but, he conceded to not letting it get the better of him and Thor can respect the gesture. Many a royal or inhabitant from another world has not managed the same.

Add to that the Archer has seen him at his very lowest point in history, when his power had been stripped from him and he has known neither in nor out and despite confessing this to Thor – admitting to witnessing the most crushing moment of his entire lifespan – he has not uttered a single word to his fellow Warriors.

So when Thor sits him down one merry evening – ale and cider are included, as well as a roasted pig – to disclose the finer points of his ‘responsibilities’ in regards to well-faring of Midgardians, he is certain that Clinton will understand, why he has felt the need to keep this part of him in the shadows; he is certain that Clinton will understand what it means that he is willing to share this piece of information with him.

 

###

 

Darcy has a major in Political Science.

It’s taken her tears, sweat, blood, sleepless nights and a Taser to finally arrive at finishing her degree and being able to attach two damn letters to her name: Darcy Lewis _BA_.

If she’s honest she’s not done yet and she knows precisely just what kind of major she wants to choose in order to attach the letters _MA_ to her name once she’s done, but as of right now, she has Jane™ to worry of. An astrophysicist and student loans that she still has not managed to pay off.

Because while her NDAs became invalid with the fall of SHIELD, so did the compromise of her few dollars of hush-money that have, recently, at the very least made some kind of dent into the sum on the credit side of her balance.

And ere she hasn’t paid that off, there is literally no use in trying to get another loan to support her educational goals. So Darcy does what Darcy does best: she focusses on the here and now and currently, that means packing.

It’s about the fourteenth time that she has to pluck apart the assembled devices that make up most of Jane’s machines and she has a system by now, which: A+ for Darcy May, but it is still a small battle of wills every time.

“I still need that.”—Jane™ complains with a soft whine.

“No you don’t.”—Darcy corrects her, continues disassembling it. “You’ve played around with it yesterday and I made certain that all your charts have been put through and calculated. The stacks are on your table.”

Her boss is quiet for a few beats before she wanders over to the table and inspects the charts that Darcy has put there early this morning. “I don’t think I tell you often enough, but you are magnificent, Darcy.”

From underneath the machine, she smiles. “Thank you, boss-woman. Remember that next time I have to pull you away from work to get you eating.”

She doesn’t receive an answer, but she hasn’t expected one either. It has taken her time to come to terms with Jane’s ability to forget everything around her and become completely immersed in her work – it is a trait she admires, don’t get her wrong, but it can become… burdensome in those moments when imbibing sustenance is no longer an option.

For all that she is a Political Science BA, Darcy has learned a whole lot of _Hard Science_ during her time with Jane™: she can tell the difference between the various equations that she cleans up for the documentation of the scientific process – she calls it _The Jane Chronicles_ – and she has learned that Duct-Tape is not a fix-all and sometimes screws have their place – so long as it’s the right place – and she knows how to calculate electrical currencies because she’s needed to more often than she’d have liked.

To be honest, she has learned so much simply being with Jane that she is reluctant to ever part from her side; so the decision to remain a little longer while she figures out how to decimate her loans comes easily.

\---

When Thor landed, Darcy, Jane and Erik had been the very first Earthlings to come into contact with the big lug. Back then, as a mere stranger, Darcy had been marginally afraid of him – okay, very – and had dealt with him the only way she knew how to. She had not expected to find out that she’d _slain_ the very Crown-Prince of an Alien Race.

Even less had she expected to rise in his esteem for that feat alone, but Thor came to call her his _lightning sister_ in Puente Antigua and then _afl-hirða_ in London.

“Explain.”—she’d demanded. “Because I haven’t brushed up enough on my Old Norse yet to fluently translate what you’ve just said.”

He smiled at her, easy and open and gestured towards a chair. “It would be my utmost pleasure, _afl-hirða_ Darcy.”

\---

Darcy is, since then, not only Jane’s Gopher; although she is still the only one capable of handling the genius scientist. She, too, bears the title of _Hearth Keeper_ and _Sister to The God of Thunder_.

She is his first and only sister.  
He, in turn, is her first and only brother.

“We’re done for today.”—Darcy says softly as she pries the device out of Jane’s cramped fingers. “We need you up early tomorrow.”

Jane™ grunts, but allows herself be guided to her room, where Darcy makes certain that she has a fresh glass of water should she get thirsty in the night – she always does, considering she barely manages to drink a minimum amount of liquids during her waking hours – and pulls off her friend’s shoes before she wraps her in the comforter and leaves to pack the rest of the machines.

Thor has had to explain the duties of a Hearth Keeper to her before she could honestly say that it was a title that she, indeed, deserved – it took him a lot longer to concede to disclose the implications of being his sister to her and even longer until she accepted the title. But she has, because family is something sacred to her, something she has wished for her entire life and she was not about to throw it away simply because it came in the, very pleasing – don’t get her wrong here, shape of one Thor Odinson.

Behind her Jane™ turns over in her bed, pulls the blanket tighter around herself and Darcy smiles softly, reaching the device she has been working on. It’s the penultimate that she has to pack away – any luck and she might actually be finished just in time to catch about seven hours of sleep.

And by Frigga that would be fan-fucking-tastic.  
She gets to work.

\---

Thor is not only the God of Thunder. He is, too, the God of Fertility and Protector of Women – it is less known, granted, because what most people hear and read, and want to hear and read, are the accounts of his ‘glorious battles’.

Stripped of his powers he has first encountered Darcy May Lewis by way of her mighty weapon that slayed him when she perceived him to be a danger to those around her – and with his own element no less. Asgard has heard many a tale of the fearless woman that was Darcy Lewis; Lady Sif herself holds her in high regard due to this alone.

Being in charge of the Lady Jane’s well-being as well as that of the Dr Selvig, Thor quickly came to the conclusion that she was the equivalent of a Minder, although his essence had been dissatisfied with this title. He could not explain it until later, when Malekith reared his ugly face, and Darcy Lewis stopped at nothing to ascertain the survival of her friend and the mental-health of the older seiðr -man.

She did not hesitate when he decreed that Jane needed to be brought to Asgard to be properly diagnosed and not even in the presence of Odin did she shy back from her self-proclaimed duty. In her fury it was her hand that collided with the cheeks of his brother and her glare he withered under when he dared make a comment on Lady Jane. The Lady Darcy braved the dungeons alongside Lady Sif and The Warrior Three when it came to breaking through royal custody.

And when Midgard was in peril of being annihilated, Heimdall smuggled _her_ out of the dungeons to send to their aid – and Heimdall saw all. At the end of the ordeal Thor understood much better what Darcy Lewis was.

“Hold this.”—he said absentmindedly as he reached for a piece of debris. The destroyed city of London had laid claim to many a Midgardian life and if he could help in preventing more souls being lost then he would gladly lift as many stones as he possibly could.

Lady Darcy did not even hesitate, for she was then busy with organizing the brothers of SHIELD to come to their aid in cleaning the remnants of the battle, and reached out her hand to hold whatever he deemed to put into her care.

It took her several minutes to realize that she was holding Mjolnir aloft.  
Thor likes to think of her stunned face whenever he needs cheering up.

No single Asgardian contested his request to name Lady Darcy to be his sister, when Heimdall substantiated his claim that the woman was worthy of The Hammer, for The Watcher was incapable by oath to lie to his liege and Odin conceded to Thor’s request.

And while the title of _systir_ , was well-earned by the young woman, his essence knew that there was another name that she carried – one that could not be earned, but would assign itself by judgement of actions taken. For the Lady Darcy was the mountain that stood when the earth shook and she was the pillar that supported his Lady Jane and the stability that grounded Erik. Thor knew of the rarity of such people on Midgard and it surprised him not when Frigga came to him in a dream and told him of the exact value of the young woman – he had known by then.

\---

It has taken a lot of haggling to get Jane into accepting her position with Stark Industries and Darcy considers it something of a _coup d’état_ to have managed to convince Jane, it has taken a lot of politicising – she feels like she should be given a medal for her mediation of the negotiation – and with all the effort she has put into turning Jane’s opinions around, she might as well have toppled a state. She’s had strategy plans laid out on her table.

As it is, her thanks is going to be expressed by being allowed to follow Jane – which is as good as anything, because, as mentioned, she has no qualms putting her study-plans on the backburner for now and move her nation as Jane goes.

And so she packs the machines and Jane into her VW-Bus and hops onto the front bench. Jane’s gangly legs fit perfectly beneath the console and as Darcy punches in the gear and she notices, in the corners of her eyes, that Jane reaches out for the cassette player – because, yes, her Baby was that old.

“If you’re putting in any of that Rachmaninoff-BS we’re going to have a talk, Janey-poo.”—she warns, moving into traffic.

Jane’s fingers hover. “But you like Rachmaninoff…”—she tapers off. Darcy can almost see the confused pout on her friend-boss-woman’s face.

“Yes, but not in the car. Not on a road-trip of five hours; like hell am I going to listen to Sergei getting it off to his Bumblebees. You’re going to put in some sensible Eighties-Rock, or Folk or even Pop – but none of that Classical Shmunz.”

Her friend dives into the small box of Mix-Tapes and Darcy focusses more intently on the traffic – her bus can be a bit hard on her until it has rolled itself warm, but she knows its ins and outs by now and she’s seriously not going to kill it off, again.

They’re hitting the Highway when finally the player clicks and _The Smiths_ start blaring about a charming man. “That’s what I’m talking about.”—she sighs and relaxes into the drive.

 

 


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There comes a twist in the story of each and roads might part, but even curves meet at some point, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been posting old left-over work from everywhere and couldn't just... not post a new chapter just because of my indulgence, so I made this. I hope it's to your liking :)

Clint has been on high ground for this mission, as per usual, on command of the Captain – he has a better eye on the secured perimeters than Tony could possibly have, even with the aid of FRIDAY and Vision.

“Wanda,”—he breathes, releasing a shot, “three parallel to your right, them’s breaking away.”

Vision doesn’t ask when Wanda turns to tug him along and manipulates the Power Stone to her needs teleporting them three streets farther from their current scene; she resurfaces with a protective bubble around them and before the Doombots can properly react to their appearance, they have disengaged two of them.

Clint concentrates on the backs of his team-mates; Thor has a habit of leaving his back open and Steve sometimes gets so caught up in ‘breaking through the lines’ that he is too far from his teammates and into the fray that he has no back-up other than the Archer on top of the next best Skyscraper.

“They’re like multiplying.”—Clint growls, eliminating another bot-cluster with one of his explosive arrows. Tony hasn’t yet found their Nest and the bots keep crawling out from under rocks and newspapers, congregating, for some reason, around three blocks.

They’ve considered the possibility that this was a decoy-battle for something bigger going on and the Fantastic Four are on Call in case something else happens – Reed has been an ass about it, but Ben has affirmed that they’d be there in case something happens – but currently nothing else _has_ happened. Clint is convinced that there has to be a higher purpose to this, a larger picture – the bots do not have a goal from what he can determine, aside from engaging the Avengers, and while Victor Van Doom can be a pompous idiot hell-bent on aggravating the whole world, he never plans assaults like this simply for shits and giggles.

“I’m on it Legolas, _please_ , keep your pants on.”—Tony replies archly; it’s the tone of his voice that lets Clint know that, as much as he wants to appear ‘on top’ of this, he is anything but – and it annoys him.

Two arrows loosen from his string, separate mid-air and hit two targets behind Thor’s back; the Warrior hasn’t even noticed.

“Yeah, well, the shorter we cut this-“

“I KNOW!”—Tony barks and Clint has to hastily step back from the edge of his roof as the Iron Man Suit flies past him, leaving a trail of hot air; it singes his draw-hand that gets out of range too late and he groans, bites back a retort that would start an argument they really couldn’t need right now.

He gnashes his teeth as he puts another Bot out of commission; he can hear the rest of the team brainstorm about the whereabouts of the Nest and agrees that doing so is a lot more productive than what he has been doing – to his defence, though, Tony yelled at all of them to concentrate on their task and let him do his part.

There’s a clicking-sound behind him and before he can properly compute, he’s turned around, but too late, because he is already losing balance, his knees buckling with the unexpected shift of ground under his feet and his brain doesn’t catch up on the change of gravity until he’s over the edge of the roof. His body works on autopilot, twists as he falls and releases a grappling-hook-arrow with smooth accuracy. It lodges around the neck of a gargoyle, it’s not optimal, but it will have to do for now, Clint swings into the building’s window, rolls thrice across the carpeted office floor and curses at the sharp pinpricks of glass that cut into his flesh. Thank God for Tac-Pants because at least his legs are save from the agonizing bite of the shards. He stands; takes in the empty cubicles with a swimming vision – _not a good sign_.

“Barton! Report!”—The Captain yells into his ear, it’s a lot louder than it should be, pierces his eardrums sharper than he knows to be normal.

“’m a’right. Change o’ posit’n ‘s good fo’ me.”—he slurs a little as he lets them know before he kneels down at the window through which he has just entered and quickly loosens a few arrows to clear the backs of his comrades, before he looks for a new vantage point.

“Stark-a need-a-lift.”—he calls, eyes already on his next position as he tries his best to brush off the shards that have lodged themselves in his skin. He’ll have to find Natasha later and convince to take those out; no way he’s going to medical. He finds a new spot higher than before; might give him an edge, so long as the bots don’t suddenly start to fly and they haven’t yet revealed an ability to do so.

“Fuck you, Barton, and the cow you ride on. I’m a little bit busy here.”

He doesn’t deign it with a reply – emotions run high when in battle, it’s not directed at him; he’s been in the field long enough to know this. It doesn’t change the fact that it compromises him, just ever so slightly.

“Okay.”—he breathes quietly, looking for a way up.

Grappling is his only choice now but his quiver only holds one more arrow of the likes that he’ll need so it’s imperative that he find a way to get there in one swoop. It doesn’t look too good from here.

“Need’a relocate,”—he lets the Team know, “-gimme five minutes max.”

“You have two.”—Steve’s voice is calm as he says this but Clint knows that without the look-out watching their backs the Avengers need to recalibrate their moves, re-assemble and make certain that they got their Is dotted – it is a hitch in the Dynamic that might cost them, so Clint has to move quickly.

Thankfully though, Big Green has developed somewhat of a soft-spot for him and when Stark doesn’t pass him a second time, he’s warned of the new arrival by a mighty roar ere a green cannonball shoots directly towards him. Clint sidesteps.

“Archer higher?”—the big green form asks him as he’s lifted onto surreally thick shoulders; Clint knows from experience that he’ll literally have his hands full trying to hold on for his life so he pulls the bow around his upper body and nods.

“Three buildings across and to our right.”—he indicates, though it sounds a lot less coherent even to his ringing ears, as he settles around the shoulders of his battle-companion. Hulk hesitates for the merest moment and Clint is about to tell him to shove it because even if he’s physically not on top, he can shoot arrows like a Pro; Olympic Level, not his usual, but still good enough.

A grunt warns him before the powerful feet vault them from their current standpoint and Clint barely notices the time they spend in the air, not compared to the harsh landing on the opposite building and the consequent jump again. He feels like he’s riding a very unhappy Bronco.

“Here.”

He hasn’t noticed that they stopped again. Or that they stopped indefinitely, but he slides down the broad, green back with a wince on the landing and gives the swimming face a wavering smile in thanks. Hulk doesn’t hesitate this time and sets off. Clint pinches his eyes.

“’n posit’n.”—he confirms as he settles on his left knee instinctually and draws an arrow before he’s even re-opened his eyes.

“Give ‘em hell, Barton, we’re almost there.”

Cap’s assurance, like his words, isn’t all there, but when Clint squints his eyes open – and that is going to be one hell of a headache later – he can see that, indeed, most of the bots are down and out for the count, and getting fewer by the minute. All he has to do now is bite the bullet and keep going – so he does what he does best: he prevails despite the odds.

The very moment he has cleared the backs of his team-mates, he thinks he hears the ominous clicking-noise from before, it’s sounds like static to him but he cannot trust his ears on a good day, lest of all when he’s banged up. Out of trained caution, he turns nevertheless, does a quick visual sweep of the rooftop he’s sequestered on. There’s nothing to see.

“Barton. Status Report.”—Cap’s voice is suspiciously muffled in his right ear despite it being the better side – Clint forces himself to think of something else; kills a bot at Tash’s back.

“Co’ner lef’; roofto’.”—he starts, zaps a bot that comes too close to his position for his liking; at least they’re still not flying. “’ow’s it look’?”

His body is numb, comfortably warm and running on adrenaline as if it is the fuel to a well-oiled machine; he’s lucky he doesn’t need to _see_ perfectly in order to flawlessly hit his targets – but his ears are futzing in and out and with only three senses at his disposal, he cannot vouch for his accuracy. Better men would bow out – hah!

“I hoped you could tell me…”—The Captain sounds a lot more worried than Clint can need right now; he forces his eyes into focus, ignores the knife-like-stab to his frontal lobe.

“Seein’ you stan’ ‘n pile o’ bots.”—he tries to sound nonchalant, as if his question had been a sassy quip rather than an earnest inquiry. “Nothin’ com’n in.”—when his speech slurs too heavily, he bites his tongue, waits for the taste of copper and sets his jaw when it comes but he hasn’t felt a single prick of pain.

The clicking-sound has returned, Clint thinks it might just be the static of the comms that his busted ears interpreted as clicking – it would not be the first time – or maybe it’s feedback, or maybe the comms are working so well he hears the clicking from the bots surrounding the grounded fighters. He loosens another arrow when he perceives movement in his field of vision, just at the very corner of his eyes.

“Shit.”

He’s too late, of course, because when his head has finally turned to identify the blurry shape, his gravitational centre is, once again, upset, one more time than necessary that day, and he realizes that the clicking are the communicating bots surrounding _him_ , but by then he is already suspended in the air.

“Cap.”

He’s not suspended though.  
He’s falling.

“Cap I’m falling.”

He hopes that the man can hear him, because he certainly can’t.  
His body lost all sense of self; he cannot feel himself, he can barely see the outline of his body swimmingly in the reflection of the windows he passes on his way down, his ears clog up in that ugly fashion erasing his already impaired hearing.

The few moments he’s in shock cost him.

When his body finally reacts, he manages to loosen his second and last Grappling-Hook-Arrow from his bow and it hooks into the relief of the house opposite. His fingers are bloody and his arms scream when he grabs on to the rope, hooks it to his bow.

Oh God.

The Ground is too close, the rope is still unfurling.

Oh holy Thor.

He closes his eyes, _feels_ the drop in the pit of his stomach, prays, prays, prays under his breath – he hopes it’s under his breath – that the fucking rope will just freaking end already.

When it does, the yank comes unexpectedly and he nearly loses his grip on the compound-bow, if it weren’t for his absolute hate of death by falling of a building.

His body swings, helplessly, towards the concrete make-up of the building he’s hooked on, and he prepares his feet, opens his eyes and sees nothing but wall. Good enough for him, just no falling, no falling, no falling.

For fuck’s sake.

The relief gives.  
The hook falters.  
He falls.

Shit.

 

\--

 

When he reopens his eyes, he is greeted with the white, blinding over-heads that are typical for the Stark Medical Wing. He groans and makes to flinch, but cannot move his head even the slightest; so he just pulls a dissatisfied face and screws his eyes shut.

He falls out of time again.

The next time he wakes up, the tubes in his throat have been removed and he can see Tash’s red-brilliant hair reflecting in the glare of the overheads. Before he loses his bearings again, he moves his hand to cover hers where it rests under her face as she sleeps.

Darkness comes.

His coming days pass much in the same fashion; he regains consciousness at random times and manages to stay awake longer and longer, though his record is yet half an hour. It’s been long enough to realize that he’s deaf. That he’s been deafened. Again.

He remembers, some time in between waking and floating in molasses, the last time the news has reached him he lost his childhood for good; he hadn’t had anything else to lose and even that small remnant of normalcy hadn’t meant a lot to him anymore. Not in comparison to the desire to survive.

But he has changed; his life has changed and he has collected, over the years, things that might as well amount to a small treasure – a lot of it is fleeting moments that he has burned into his retinas and that, therefore, will remain with him no matter what life throws him – he’s learned to value those the most, because they could not be taken from him.

There are, however, also fragiles amongst his treasure and he’s afraid they’re going to break. And he doesn’t know what to do.

 

###

 

Darcy knows that this has been but a question of time. She has, however, hoped that it would happen… differently. Respectfully, for one.

“Pardon my question but what exactly do you mean when you say I am not permitted into the Tower?”—she tries politely, holding her Badge aloft – the very same Key-Card that has admitted her for the last year now.

The secretary behind the desk hands her a form and makes to grab the badge; Darcy pulls it back wordlessly. The woman’s eyes narrow, enhance the lines in her grey face and she wonders, for a split moment, if her morning has been bad, before she remembers that she cannot have compassion for those that will throw it back in her face like this woman looks to be about to.

Brown-lacquered nails pin the form onto the surface between them. “Your allowance for a year has expired and has not been renewed.”—the woman pins her down with eyes that are both efficient and cold; her mouth doesn’t twist up, when she says the next words: “Essentially, Ms Lewis, your contract has ended and you are but a guest. Please do behave accordingly or I will have to have you escorted off the premises with legislative consequences to follow.”

She draws her brown-nails from the form and turns her hand palm-upwards, waiting for the badge.

The hold-up costs Darcy fifteen minutes in which she asks herself if she has perhaps overseen the form to extend her internship and allowance, given the fact that she handles the paperwork for three scientists – it could happen, of course, but then it would have come a second time, because the tower’s staff has long since gotten used to Tony’s ignorance towards paper-work and usually do not stop sending missives until they have found them signed and returned to their post-boxes or their tables.

There must have been a mix-up along the way.

“Your coffee.”—she says quietly, still sunken in thought, as she hands Jane her perfunctory _juice of life_ just the way she likes it and watches out of the corner of her eyes as the scientist gulps it down without any thought of hesitation.

“You wouldn’t happen to know why my internship-contract hasn’t been renewed?”—she throws into the following silence, but, as predicted, Jane™ doesn’t react outside of a grunt; it’s hour thirty and Darcy would allow for a few more hours but, as it stands, she is personally not allowed to remain for longer than a time-span of sixty minutes.

Darcy packs and is done within half an hour.

Jane™ has moved into Dr Banner’s science-den, a room that is heavily off limits for Darcy – has been even when she still had The Badge and The Contract – and she doesn’t dare to even get close to it lest they will escort her from the premises and follow up with a lawsuit.

She watches Jane™ excitedly talk about a set of formulas she has just managed to unlock and Bruce gives her an indulgent smile that Darcy has come to love about the man from afar. They never exchanged words, but she values the man for allowing her Jane entrance into his laboratory whenever she needed it – and be it only for human nearness. Darcy feels ridiculously small in the bright, white lab, all of her possessions in a small carton-box whose handles slowly crumple under her contracting hands.

“FRIDAY, I leave the care of my favourite scientist to you.”—Darcy says softly. “Swear to me that you will watch her as if she were a circuit of yours.”

“It will be my utmost pleasure, Ms Lewis.”

Darcy leaves Jane’s side unexpectedly and unprepared on a sunny Wednesday morning sometime during autumn. She has no place to go and nothing to do; she has nothing to her name except for her Van and its’ insides and the cardboard-box in her hands.

She’s going to have to grow up real quick.

 

\---

 

Her van is a beauty that has gone through all times with her ever since she has gotten it for her 18th birthday from her gram. It is still a sight to behold, given that Darcy has cared for it more than she has for herself at times and if it were her pet then she would have been the type of person to buy cat-food but not sustenance for herself – this way around she has regularly had to admit to her tendency to bring her _baby_ to the shop while she herself barely has had anything to eat.

_Baby_ on her part has always paid her thanks by working no matter the circumstance, by giving her – them – shelter when no one and nothing else has; this van has been part of the Thor Welcoming Committee and the first to bring the Asgardian to his knees.

Darcy is proud of her Baby.  
Right now, though, she needs it to be her home – and that is going to need every single adaption skill she has ever acquired during her time with Jane.

She starts by cleaning off the singular cot from all the wrappers and left-overs and clothing that doesn’t belong to her. Jane will probably not miss it but it’d be a shame to get rid of it indefinitely; and who knows maybe she’ll be in need of smaller shirts one day.

There may be hard times ahead of her yet; she has no idea.

 

\---

 

The first week she spends looking for a job and finds a no-brainer in a small, if slightly off-putting, diner run by a man that has a higher voice than she does and while it’s not ideal, it’s a job and it’s a first step towards a flat. No matter how small it might be.

Of course they hit a small bump when she cannot give him an address.

“What do you mean, no address?”—the diminutive man asks her and Darcy is sincerely hard-pressed to not to smirk because he is _adorable_ – that is something the old Darcy would have done, but she likes to think she’s matured – in his endeavour to appear serious.

“I’ve been travellin’.”—she tells him, lets some of her Southern Slang pour onto her tongue and into her speech. “Finished my degree, came ‘ere.” She shrugs. It’s not a lie and it’s about as much as she’s allowed to say what with the NDAs she’s had to sign; now that she’s in the situation itself she’s a little miffed at SHIELD and/or SI for not providing a cover-story.

He nods a little hectically – like a Duracell-Rabbit, old Darcy snickers behind her hand – trying to come across as understanding. But even before he speaks up again, she knows she’s taken. He needs the help, she can see it, and she has acquired a sense of able-bodied-ness that she can feel working as of this moment.

A decisive nod ends the silence between them and he looks up at her with a small squint to his eyes.

“Proper hygiene.”—he starts and lifts his right pointer finger. “Timeliness.”—his middle finger joins the pointer finger. “And you need a proper address within the first three months.”

Apparently he is convinced she’ll stay that long; but she somewhat is so she nods, answering nonverbally to his conditions. “One week trial and you get a contract afterwards.”

 

\---

 

She does what she does best: she throws herself into work – it’s an age-old coping mechanism and she is not surprised that it works. Old regulars of the Williamsburg Diner that have grown accustomed to swallowing down their grub without tasting it are at first a little perplexed at her stubborn refusal to let herself be dragged down by the surrounding bleakness and it takes them a few starts to get used to the bubbly smile and persona she puts forth during her working hours.

Her boss is not a genius and there’s a lot to the life around town that he hasn’t yet fully grasped, but he is uniquely enthusiastic about his business and everything else that he starts.

They click in a non-clicking way because outside of work, Darcy does not have a single second of contact with the older man. As it is, she doesn’t have _any_ kind of contact and this, she quickly, realizes bites her in the ass quicker than she can say _Bilgesnipe_. Because even if she hadn’t had contacts in the Big Apple itself, maybe her contacts would have.

As it turns out though, a cell-phone company, too, needs an address – not, necessarily, to send invoices, but because they need an account-number for the payments and with her discharge from SI, so did her student-account fly from her. No matter that she’d never really had a dime on it, because whatever went on it was almost immediately siphoned off to pay her loans. So yes: account, she needs one and cannot get one, because banks… well… they _do_ need a modicum of personal details. Amongst others: an address.

Her phone-number, therefor, doesn’t live long and Darcy has to go about flat-hunting the traditional paper-craig’s-list-and-calling-mailing-way. It’s exhausting as fuck and she doesn’t know how grown-ups do it.

 

\---

 

“She probably thinks I’m a serial killer or something.”—she mumbles to her quiet conversation partner as she bites into her slice of pizza, handing them the second slice she bought; never before has she seen a Hawaiian being devoured so quickly – granted it’s luke-warm at best, but it’s still impressive.

“Like hell did her six foot two son _happen_ to be around after his boxing classes.”—she viciously takes another bite, chomps on it as if it could resolve her anger. “Seriously though. What do I look like, huh?”

Her partner gives her a deep look but remains quiet – Darcy is still chewing on her slice and she is better than involuntarily spitting at them because she’s yelling out her indignation at the world into their direction. She’s learned better.

Instead, she takes a page out of her buddy’s book and finishes her pizza-slice in silence and her steam is miraculously gone afterward. She folds her paper-plate and lobs it successfully at the waste-bin. Her pal knows the sign; he leans close.

“Love you too, buddy.”—she says softly, daring to offer her hand.

They’ve had a few rough patches and from what she can tell he’s practically a wild animal, but he’s warmed up to her ever since she’s started feeding him with pizza-slices on the sly. She doesn’t know his name, but he’s a good cuddle when he feels up to it though, seriously, he has yet to have a bath that will rid him of the stink in his fur.

The cold snout presses to the back of her hand, snuffles familiarly and Darcy smiles. “See you around, pretty boy.”

As she stands, so does the dog and even before she’s turned around to leave, the animal has taken to the right and is already weaving into back-alleys that are too outlandish for Darcy to even think about.

She has to get to work.

 

\---

 

“Hands in the air nobody move!”

The kid waving the gun in her face is seventeen, maybe. She can count pimples. But when she doesn’t immediately comply, he smoothly unlocks the safety-hatch from his gun and _shit_ she knows that sound way too intimately and before she can say something stupid, she kneels down.

Her customers follow her example. Woven Hand warbles through the five dollar boxes at the end of her booth and she thinks it’s seriously ironic that her brain has suddenly nothing better to fixate on but the refrain of the song. She takes a deep breath through the nose, exhales just as profoundly.

She’s been in worse situations.

The boy turns on her in an impressive Snape-like-swoop and only now does it register with her that she’s the only one in the diner who’s not putting her nose to the floor. Innocently, she looks up at the boy through her lashes – it’s a look she has perfected and would, usually, never waste on a specimen of his age.

“I work here.”—she says evenly. “What do you want?”

Compliance is generally advised by the police in such situations and Darcy is well aware that they are insured against robberies – unfortunately they happen much too often around here to risk not being insured against it.

“Lock the door.”—he cocks his head towards the glass of the door and Darcy stands, slowly, her movements precise and careful as she pulls out the key first and goes to lock the door. When the lock clicks, so do the facts and she comes to a startling realization: this is not a robbery. This is taking hostages.

Darcy takes another deep breath and steps back from the door.  
She lowers her eyes even though she stands straight; looking at him directly might challenge and-or antagonize him and not doing that means she and her fellow hostages might just live longer.

“Anything-“

“DON’T ASK ME IF I WANT ANYTHING ELSE LIKE I’M A DAMN CUSTOMER!”—he explodes right in her face. She doesn’t even flinch despite the vehemence – the boy has nothing on Phillip Coulson when he hasn’t had his coffee – and instead puts the key down on the table and sinks back to her knees. The gesture seems to placate him and he puts a shaky hand over his mouth to wipe at the sweat as he points the gun back at her.

“Where’s your boss?”—he asks a lot more composed; the quick change is startling but gives Darcy a clearer picture.

“He’s not here today.”—she answers swiftly. “Spa-day.”

She loves her boss for taking spa-days, she really does because it means that once a month she reigns supreme over the music and can get away from the 90s bubble-gum pop he likes to force onto her and the customers. Maybe though today was a bad day.

“YOU’RE LYING!”—the man explodes again, but gives a simultaneously defeated air with the way he throws his hands into the air. As he turns around to make a few steps _somewhere_ to collect himself, Darcy hears only one thing in her head.

_Now_

She catapults herself forward and with her shoulder into his liver.

 


	3. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which two make ends meet and end up meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY COW YOU GUYS WHAAAATTTT?????!!!! I was not prepared for the onslaught of curious comments and support and I am seriously baffled at it, but also immensely thankful! Thank you for bearing with me and for loving this story so much already :) 
> 
> I will endeavour to keep up the work and just... thank you so much for all your interest and love in the forms of comments :3

The last time he’s seen Barney, his brother tried to shoot him – honest to god bullet-thought-the-chest shoot him and they parted on no terms at all. Clint wanted to be away from him so he never tried to find him again; he closed that chapter of his life and didn’t think he’d ever have to reopen it again.

But that’s the thing with _chapters_ – they can, and likely will, be reread in order to be revised and edited. 

Currently, Clint is having a hard time editing the Barney-Chapter.

_The fuck am I supposed to do with this_ —he signs sloppily at Natasha, who, graciously, translates his question a little more carefully to the notary who has not even five minutes ago read the present attendees the will of Barney Barton.

Present attendees are comprised of Clint, Natasha and a shady looking fellow who Clint sincerely feels like kicking in the balls until he cannot breathe – there is barely any hair on the head of the man, safe for the few survivor-strands that cling limply to the sides of the skull like dead ivy to a wall, and the old Adidas-track-suit is not doing his bulging barrel of a stomach any favours. As it stands, neither is the Hugo Boss Fragrance covering up the stench of what appears to be three days going without a shower.

Now he knows Barney was a crook. After his days in Iraq in the Explosive Ordinance Disposal – basically: Suicide Squad USA – he came back home to find that nothing had quite the thrill that he’d grown accustomed to. Normal life became ‘boring’ rather quickly so going for the diverse had seemed like a good option; even when it pulled him into the morass of the big cities around the world.

His Army pay had never been retracted, given the fact that proving he was, indeed, in cahoots with mafias around the globe was difficult – as much as a crook he was, Barney was also hellishly intelligent.

And now Clint is the – not so – proud owner of about $ 2.5 billion. In short: he’s filthy rich and he doesn’t know how; or if he even wants the money because the majority of it sure as _hell_ didn’t come from clean business.

The mouth of the notary is moving, Nat is nodding in constant intervals and Clint is really thinking of standing up and having at the guy to his left and behind – simply to scratch at the itch under his god damn skin – but he doesn’t because now that he’s _deaf_ he’s not an Avenger anymore and that means having to behave like a damn normal citizen.

That had been a hard talk.  
Or rather… just… it had been hard even getting his point across, or properly getting theirs – Tash wasn’t 100% fluid in ASL and Clint only had one pair of eyes and could concentrate on one mouth at the time only. It had been exactly as he’d feared, and very precisely what he’d wanted to avoid.

Thor had unfortunately been off planet and a vicious voice in his head had called them all sorts of names, starting with _cowards_ for announcing that particular decision while his best friend after Tash was away. It left him with no back up and no way to articulate himself (All Speak was wondrously proficient even in translating mad hand waving and angry finger wriggling).

Tash waves her hand in front of his eyes to get his attention; she translates what the notary said, haltingly, but honestly.

_Do whatever the fuck you want_

Clint is prepared for this; pulls a dossier on a rundown apartment-block somewhere in the city; he hasn’t even seen it yet, but Barney lived there, apparently. The notary nods and before another hour is even over, Clint is in deeply engrossed in the legal process of buying the house that Barney’s apartment is in. Some big-shot real-estate-company has had it in holding for some time now and is desperate to get rid of it; the notary is rather optimistic that it’ll end up in Clint’s possession.

  
The man in the back stands up in such a rush that Clint can _feel_ it in the floor; he doesn’t need to hear to know that he’s just made an enemy.

 

\--

 

The house he buys is a run-down factory that, sometime in the early 1900s had been transformed into make-shift lodgings only to have it stick for good. The façade would have to be renovated and there are probably about a hundred piping issues hiding in the cracks decorating the house’s staircase and the moment he enters ‘Barney’s’ apartment he knows his brother has never truly lived here, but it’s his now. 

This cracked up agglomeration of apartments under a flat roof in Bedford-Stuyvesant is now the property of Clinton Francis Barton and… he swallows.

At least he won’t have to go stir-crazy right away.  
Cats will yet be spared his company.

 

\--

 

It’s December 4th when first he gets to see Mr Adidas-Track-Suit again – he’s lost the last stubborn tufts of hair and, by the looks of it, some of his teeth too. Clint is only somewhat certain that it’s not related to his purchase of the house he’s currently living in. The tenants have been ridiculously happy to have a deaf owner.

“You should sell.”—Mr Tracksuit talks to him like he doesn’t know that Clint is deaf and so he doesn’t react at all. Adidas’ face scrunches up; his chin morphs from smooth skin to ugly red dimples as the man pushes it forward and rolls his lips inward until only a small rotund of the upper- and lower-lip remain and the rest forms a down-turned bracket. He looks as if someone painted Disney’s Chanyu in the way of the Chinese at the time. It’s not a flattering picture.

“Your loss.”—Tracksuit spits in front of his feet as he walks away, the bottom of his barrel-stomach peeking out from under the vest; it’s hairy and pasty and Clint does not need it adding to the already horrid pictures he has spooking around in his mind. He’s sure that particular treasure trail is going to come to haunt him.

_Bye Sucker_ —he signs at the retreating Adidas Logo.

Despite his cockiness, he stocks up on his weaponry.   
There’ll be no telling the Avengers about this; there’ll be no telling _anyone_ about this – he’ll be lucky if his tenants make it out alive.

Probably.

 

\--

 

As it turns out though, even mobsters have some common sense and, instead of attacking his _house_ , they ambush him during a pizza-run; which, quite frankly, is an insulting thing to do – he’s not even in Bed-Stuy.

There’s this crappy little Snack-Cart, handled by a man whose name he can’t spell properly until he’s heard it from the mouth of the owner himself because there’s something in it Clint doesn’t quite get by reading the lips, that serves the hottest pizza-slices around the boroughs. The cheese is runny and perfect and eight times out of ten he burns his fucking tongue with it; but it’s cheap and the dairy clogs his stomach until it thinks it’s been fed appropriately and stops demanding attention.

He wastes a perfectly good slice of Pizza on the face of Mr Tracksuit and watches with morbid satisfaction when the blistering hot cheese settles over the eyelids of the ass-hat. His clique is not prepared for a deaf-man fighting, so he has about the blink of an eye to make as much damage as possible – he makes it count, unhinges the jaw of another track-suited thug with a well-placed rounder-kick that Tash has taught him those many years ago, his victim whips around heavily and inadvertently head-butts one of his _compadres_ – it’s not nearly as bad as Clint wants, but it’s good for now – before he takes out the knee of another one.

Four is as far as he gets before the stupor wears off and somebody pulls a gun.   
Which is when he knows things will go bad.

The first shot hits him too soon for him to move, but not proficiently and only into the upper arm, before he manages to wrench the gun out of the hand of the tracksuit, he clocks him with the uninjured arm and disassembles it with quick moves as the man in front of him wavers on his feet and Clint abuses the moment of instability to ruthlessly bring down his heel onto the pubic bone of the man. It doesn’t break but Clint knows from experience that it hurts like hell.

He doesn’t hear the attack from behind him and is surprised by the sharp pain at the back of his head – he falls, dark spots clouding his vision as he instinctively drops into a Judo Roll. His hand scraps over something that identifies at somewhat sharp and as he comes up to his knees, he throws the projectile at the torso of his attacker – it turns out to be a nail-file though and doesn’t exactly do damage. It distracts his opponent nevertheless and in the short moment of diversion, he hails a hefty punch to the Solar Plexus.

Within five minutes his six attackers are on the ground and unwilling or –able to move; Clint has suffered what appears to be a minor concussion and a shot-graze. He’s had worse.

They don’t come back.

 

\--

 

A week later though, Clint wonders if, maybe, they chose to go another route – because something is not quite _kosher_ in his house; the basement-door gives off a weird vibe which, said by an Avenger (even if only former) who’s been under the literal boot of the God of Mischief, means something. And so, one evening, Clint decides to just give it a shot.

He has several projectiles on his body, as well as a slingshot that he knows to employ. But the basement is quiet when he steps into it.

It is obvious that, recently, somebody has been here going by the scuff marks on the cold floor. It’s fucking freezing though and he wonders about the desperation of people that would, willingly, come down here.

Moving deeper into the old arcs of the brown-stone, he is surprised to find that the farther he moves in, the less cold it gets, when he looks up and around he realizes just why. Some clever busy-body had taken it upon themselves to insulate the surroundings with mattresses hidden between wooden pallets; he twirls the slingshot thoughtfully between his fingers as he ventures on.

The high windows to the back of the basement allow for natural lighting to stream into the arcs and he wonders if maybe he should think about refurbishing it properly and offering it up as a studio apartment; God knows there’d be enough young folk snatching it up. 

Clint stumbles; looks down. His feet are tangled in an electrical cord that he is rather certain has no business whatsoever being down here – he follows it as if it were the red string to a story and finally happens upon The Nest.

Well, at least he now knows that it’s not a Drug Addict.

 

###

 

She emerges from the scuffle with two broken fingers and a few heavy-duty black spots but the Diner remains intact and once she’s managed to cut off a sufficient amount of oxygen from the ass-cracker that just wanted to rob her and he loses consciousness, she can positively attest to the fact that she _never wants to do that again._

“Call the police.”—she asks a nearby customer as she bends over the young boy and checks for his pulse; thank Thor it’s there.

Darcy fully dismantles the gun before she looks for something to tie the guy up with; if he somehow miraculously wakes up and still feels homicidal at least he won’t have a projectile weapon any longer. She finds a plastic-bag full of zip-ties in a drawer behind the counter; she’s not even certain if she wants to know _why_ – but instead rolls with it and puts one of them around the wrists of the still unconscious boy.

When that is done, she gives a cursory look around the diner.

“Everyone alright and accounted for?”—she asks loudly; nods all around. “Fantastic. Now I’ll open the door but please remain inside, the police will be here shortly-“

“Five minutes.”—the man who called 911 interrupts her briefly and she gives him a nod of acknowledgement.

“-in five minutes”—she continues on, correcting herself, “and I’d appreciate it if y’all waited to give your statement. There’s free cake in the meantime.”

Because police never takes ‘just five minutes’ no matter what they say and not only does she need to keep her guests occupied, but the adrenaline is going to be leaving their systems like a Bat Out Of Hell and jittery nerves are usually best soothed with sweets. Also, she’s made the Chocolate Cake herself and she’s curious as to the comments of the customers.

When the police do arrive Darcy has managed to put the young man into a booth all by himself and he is reluctantly nibbling on the straw in his smoothie – because she might have trounced him, but never let it be said that she is a bad host.

One of the police-men – he looks nice, a little surprised but nice – gives her a high brow when he notices and leaves his colleagues to fan out in the diner as well as take in the bound perpetrator as he swaggers up to her. The disassembled gun is still lying in front of her and when he sees it his second brow joins the first.

“Ma’am.”—he greets her carefully, tips his hat and everything; Darcy nods from behind her Hot Cocoa.

“Officer.”—she replies as she steps away from where she’s leaning against the counter and towards the bar; towards him. She puts her Cocoa down and pushes all the pieces towards him. “I have a statement prepared?”

He has dimples, she notices when surprise finally wins over and he smiles a little baffled. “Would you mind if I took a seat?”—he motions towards a stool.

“Go ahead. You guys want a coffee?”—it appears she’s said the magic word because blue-caps around the diner appear above the booth-ends, revealing hopeful faces; Darcy makes a quick headcount before moving towards the To-Go cups.

The officer at her bar looks at her with curious blue eyes that make her wonder just a little. “You’re awfully calm.”—he finally says when she’s filled the last of the To-Go-Cups and is ready to dole them out; Darcy snorts.

“Hon, I’m jittery like a freshly-birthed fawn but I’ll be damned if it’ll stop me from being a good host.”—Texas comes through and the man smirks a little wryly when she pushes the container of hot liquid into his hands. “Give me a moment to cater to your boys and I’ll be all yours.”

He’s a cutie – beautiful copper hair, pale skin, impish freckles and the brightest, bluest eyes she’s seen in a while. But he’s a Cop and even as she flirts with him like there’s no tomorrow, she’s well aware that it’ll lead nowhere. Officer Peyton is a dish she’ll save for the cold nights in her van – of which, currently, there are aplenty. It’s lovely, too, that he doesn’t hold back either and when he leaves they are both a little red-faced but smiling.

It only comes to her later that she, too, managed to divert most of his attention to her plot-holes by flirting with him and feels a little dirty for it. Despite liking him, she hopes he won’t return to the diner.

 

\--

 

December comes and she still has not managed to find a valid apartment that she’d voluntarily stay at and can afford. At this point she’d even deny pickiness because she _has_ considered the apartment above the strip-club; seriously the bass probably wouldn’t even have bothered her and if the proprietor of said club wouldn’t have come on to her… yeah, she’d have taken the flat.

But security is a human _need_ – ask Maslow – and therefor she feels unrepentant in her decision to not have taken the apartment.

Fact remains that she does not have an actual address though and she’s running out of her three months fast. By the end of December, in order to satisfy another human need, _security of employment_ , she needs an address and because the _good way_ hasn’t worked, Darcy improvises.

She’s always been good at that; it’s why she managed to stay with Jane longer than anyone could possibly have estimated.

 

\--

 

“So if it don’t work the grown-up-way-“—she says between bites of deliciously hot pizza, “-it’ll have to be my way.”

Her pizza buddie seems as pleased as she is regarding the temperature of the slice that she’s left him; the Cart she’s got them from is delightfully overrun by what appears to be regulars – she has already jotted down the route of the Cart in order to never again have to suffer from luke-warm-pizza.

The cheese is perfectly hot on her tongue – near to blistering – and she relishes in its abundance, mostly because it means that she won’t feel her stomach twisting in hunger, for once. Eating from the diner is not something she’s discussed with her boss and she doesn’t want to find out if it’s allowed or not by simply doing it and being caught. Also the cook is a little shady and she’s not certain if she trusts him with anything he’d prepare for her.

When they’re both done, Darcy accompanies her friend a few yards through the brown sludge that is all that remains from the white powder hailing from the sky. Her friend stops at a corner, looks to the right and she gives him a small wave.

“Bye buddy.”

He doesn’t answer or even look back as he trudges towards some unknown destination, Darcy fills her lungs with the crisp winter air.

“Time to unpack the Big Girl Panties, Lewis.”—she tells herself as she crosses the road; in this weather her van won’t do her any good for much longer either way.

 

\--

 

Shelter becomes imperative when her van breaks down. Forty years the girl has served her family now, but it seems like this is the end of the road for her – of course Darcy can’t say anything for certain without a mechanic but she’s short on pretty much anything but her awesomeness at the moment so her girl will, unfortunately, have to wait.

On the upside, her van has stopped right in front of a run-down factory that looks semi-habitable. Before Thor Darcy hadn’t put much faith in divinatory stories or esoteric rituals, but meeting a God-Alien whose science-magic made him the protector of women and the mythological figure responsible for fertility she had become at least a little more tolerant to ‘lucky occurrences’.

So when she steps out of her van that late evening and realizes that the cellar-door to the factory-turned-apartment-block, she doesn’t hesitate to, at least, check it out – because she’s not going to stay here if a) somebody already ‘lives’ here or b) she doesn’t have a way to enter undetected. Because the building looks nice enough and who knows, maybe the landlord is somewhat cool – she might want an actual apartment here, in the future, once she has re-opened an account and is in possession of a functioning cell-phone again.

The cellar is cold, which was to be expected, but the arches are high and she can _see_ the windows on the other side of the building as she carefully steps through the rooms.  It’s clean, uninhabited and unused, a few mattresses for isolation and she might even be able to sleep here without much interruption – her sleeping-bag was designed for Arctic Expeditions after all (God bless whoever at SHIELD equipped her for Norway) and kept her warm; so long as she kept somewhat _dry_.

Her first night is not nearly as bad as she anticipated.

 

\--

 

There’s a guy on her pallet. He looks somewhat familiar, though she cannot, for the life of her, remember when or where she might have seen him before – as it is, though, she is way too close _now_ to still go unnoticed by him.

Her hand is on her taser, ready to fire even though they are technically forbidden in New York, but this is her ‘home’ and like hell is she going to give it up because of some creep. His eyes sweep her with familiar wonder, as if he too remembers her and they hang on her Taser-hand for a second before he looks up at her again.

“Those are illegal ‘round here.”

His voice is quieter than she would have anticipated, but he doesn’t make any move towards her so she allows herself to move her hand away from her hip – she doesn’t disarm herself though. She’s not that stupid.

“Who are you?”—she asks as she steps back; she’s ready to run if that’s what it takes. Her van won’t take her anywhere and all her possessions are here, not to forget that she has just given her boss her new address – seriously, it must have been an hour and a half ago, tops. But she has a _plan_ for the worst-case scenario, so if she has to run, at least it won’t be alike to a headless chicken.

“I can’t read lips very well, hon. Especially not in the dark.”—he answers her, squints his eyes and ducks his head in that instinctual fashion people have when they try to get a closer look at something that is just outside of their visual field. Darcy bites her lips, hesitant.

_Who are you_ —she signs somewhat stiltedly, but she doesn’t step out of the shades. If he can’t read her lips then maybe he can’t see her quite that well and in case she has to run that might just be an advantage for her; can’t put out an APB if you have no points to bulletin.

“Clint Barton.”—he answers. “’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms Lewis.”

_Fuck_.


	4. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you people, you absolutely lovely people, I'm sorry for the delay although I've warned you about irregular updates. Because some have asked as to the reason for this: I am writing on my thesis, and it has priority, simple. It's not as much the muse disliking me or whatever else, I just... have a life that needs me to prioritise right now and my number one priority is my thesis. I am sorry if that disappoints you, but I am unwilling to compromise on this, seriously. I hope, though, that you might like the story itself enough to overlook this behavioural tic of mine and will still love to read it - it would be my greatest pleasure. 
> 
> Thank you for understanding and please enjoy the new chapter.

He’s met Darcy Lewis before; kind of.

As surveillance detail on The Hammer in Puente Antigua, of course he’s had Drs Foster and Selvig on his radar – and with them also Ms Darcy Lewis. Originally he’d written them all of as harmless civilians incapable of even scratching the lack of his Volkswagen.

At least until Ms Lewis managed to create a suitable decoy for the giant behemoth of a blonde that would turn out to be Thor Odinson of Asgard and get him off the hook from incarceration due to invasion of a taped off government operation.

Their techs realized too late that some of the information did not add up, such as the actual height of the man and the documented numbers in his supposed passport.

By then the fiery, walking metal-contraption that Thor called _The Destroyer_ in later stories was already on earth and well on its way to level Puente Antigua. Darcy Lewis remained on his radar on behest of Phil Coulson who considered pulling her in if ever she exhibited any interest in their line of work.

She didn’t naturally, she’s a clever thing and destined for something much larger than she could have anticipated – Phil realized that quicker than Ms Lewis herself probably did, but he never had the possibility of telling her so himself.

“I was there at-“

 _I know.—_ her lips interrupt him rudely; her words are sharp even to him and viciously underlined by the thunderous expression on her face as she steps closer to him; her Taser is in her hand already and he doesn’t doubt that she’s seriously contemplating putting him to sleep and dropping him in front of Avenger’s Tower like an unwanted Mongrel.

She snarls something that he cannot read off her lips, but can guess the content of, and he’s not all that sad that he can’t, currently, _hear_ her because he doesn’t doubt he’d be rearing from the verbal slap that she looks like handing out.

“I’m the house-owner?”—he tries and shocks her into confusion so thoroughly, that she lets her guard down but for a moment. Her arm is back up the next blink of the eye, but it’s that one moment that he finds himself somewhat disappointed in her – she should be used to confusing news, enough to not let her guard down.

It’s SHIELD 101.

He takes a deep breath. “I had an accident a few months ago-”—he gestures to his ears. “-finally jacked up my ears; can’t hear for shit and cripples are apparently not welcome in a team of superheroes.”

The words sound pathetic and bitter to him even though he can’t hear his voice – he doesn’t take it back though.

Her Taser-hand goes down and the young woman comes closer; sits down on the pallet next to him.

 _My contract ran out.—_ she admits.

\---

He gives her an apartment because _how can he not_ – she needs the address for her job and she’s got a steady income; pays her rent right away and everything and she’s a good tenant.

A week into her stay he finds her shovelling the snow from the steps on her day off, and entertain Simone’s boys from 8B into building small snow-men with the mass of white that she pushes to the side. They are studiously building a mama-snow-woman when he arrives at the stairs and gives her a curious once-over that she doesn’t immediately notice.

Her coat looks thinner than he would consider healthy for the current weather conditions; it’s woollen but threadbare on the stress-points held in a dark-grey colour that sets off her beautiful pale skin. She’s glowing from the exertion, cheeks beautifully coloured and complementing her dark-red lips and accentuated lashes – she looks as if painted. Her dark locks tumble out from under a beret and her fingers look clammed up on the handle of the shovel she’s wielding.

When she sees him, her lips part into a wide, open smile that he cannot help but respond to with a small grin of his own.

 _Tito didn’t dare go out today because he was afraid he’d fall and break his hip._ —she signs him and the gestures look a lot more beautiful coming from her hands than when he attempts to communicate with his fingers.

He rolls his eyes. “He’d tell me it’s dangerous for him to walk outside when there’s sun because he might burn his skin and die from cancer.”—he grunts. “Crazy bat.”

Darcy’s smile morphs into a smirk, but she shrugs and continues to shovel the snow until he steps in, halting her in her movement.

“Go cuddle with a cup of cocoa; I’ll do the ice.”

Because he’s against salting he’ll have to break it up with blunt force and he doesn’t want Darcy to have to do that. Luckily for him, she does as he asks – he is not prepared for the Thermos waiting for him on the staircase when he comes back in, but he’s not complaining either.

\---

The first time he unpacks the bow is when AIM soldiers fall from the sky around the 15th. He doesn’t know what happened or what they are doing here, but he sure as hell doesn’t want them anywhere near his house – despite the fact that, for them, it looks like the best place to hide.

Read: the best place to weasel into, find some unsuspecting tenant and black-mail them into protecting their ugly, yellow hides.

Three of them are already making headway when he steps out of the doorway, arrow knocked and ready to let loose.

“Think again.”—he growls at the nearest yolk-head.

Somewhere behind them he can see the glint of Adamantium Claws and the occasional interlude of White Webbing; they come at him nevertheless which is why he has no compunction at all to loosen his projectile, watching with singing blood as he marks the target.

It’s when the melee is over that he turns around to see Darcy standing at the foot of the stairs, Taser out. _There are four more on the roof but they’re too heavy to carry down and I felt bad throwing them._ —she lets him know and Clint has all but forgotten about the roof-entrance and the fact that the AIM-agents had come from above.

“Since when do you know how to fight?”—he asks somewhat angrily, he can feel the reverberation in his chest and knows that it is not a nice sound in her ears. He doesn’t like thinking of her fending off yolk-yellow ass-hats.

Darcy doesn’t answer and the light from the open door he stands in catches her eyes making them gleam with something feral and dangerous for a second before the moment is over and he is convinced that he’s imagined it.

Logan and Peter are already jogging towards the doorstep and before they arrive, she’s up the stairwell and well out of their field of vision.

He drops the bodies over the railing later on without remorse; Peter’s web catches them either way.

\---

Clint doesn’t really mean to fall back into the whole avenging thing; he doesn’t want to be that guy that goes out in the streets at night and beats up molesters, mugs and cartels, but it turns out that getting into a habit of doing so – or having gotten into said habit as a former member of a super-hero-alliance – leaves marks on one’s psyche.

The first time he sees Aimee’s ever so stellar friend-on-some-nights – Clint can _smell_ the drug-crazy on this one five yards against Hurricane Matthew – raise his hand he knows that he cannot idly stand by. It’s not in his nature. Asshat Alex never returns; Aimee returns to being the outgoing girl that he likes and smiles at on the stairs.

It deteriorates from thereon.  
Or does it build?

The bow never again goes back into the box he transported it in and the practice-dummies emerge from their proper caskets to find their place at the far end of his apartment in front of his windows – which would be a stupid idea, if he weren’t Hawkeye.

While he doesn’t, exactly, go out at night to _look_ for trouble, it does sometimes find him – more often than he would like to admit – and because he is good at his job, it does not find him a second time.

He doesn’t know when he starts to look for the trouble that tends to follow Darcy.

\---

She’s a spitfire with a mouth quicker than Tash’s Widow Bites and that’s saying something because those fuckers caught him off guard more often than a healthy man would like to admit – although Clint has never been about healthy.

Add to that a body that would have put Rogers’ face aflame if ever he’d have laid eyes on it – especially with those painted red lips – and a mind that could give Robin Williams a run for his money and you had one Darcy Anne Lewis, ready for take-off, sir.

Needless to say that she stands out of the regular crowd rather easily – especially because she has a habit of stepping in and up for those who cannot defend themselves. She’s on a surprisingly good foot with the 88th precinct although he suspects that she has something to do with the pretty blonde on Officer Peyton’s arm because the young woman always smiles brighter when seeing Darcy and the young Paddy himself treats her like family.

Which is a good thing on one hand, because it means that his Officers patrol the diner Darcy works at a little more often after realizing that it had, in the past, been victim to several discriminatory crimes gone unpunished – it might, too, have to do with the fact that she gifts them with free coffee – but the moment he is out of sight, shadows happen to accumulate around her.

Clint has observed this new audience of hers the moment he noticed the curious eyes watching her coming back to the apartment building from another long night at work – she has more of those every week it seems, but Clint isn’t privy to her working hours (not yet; not really) – and it has taken him some time to filter out that they are mostly, comprised of curious youths and that Darcy doesn’t mind them.

However he does surprise the one or other less-than-stellar Curious George in their dark alley-ways and corners every now and then; naturally they ‘never meant any harm’, but the fact that Clint doesn’t even have to _ask_ casts a rather dubious light on those statements of innocence.

So yes he starts to look out for her; waits at one of his windows with a pot of coffee and follows her trail as she sidesteps plastic bags on her way towards his front door, the small entourage of sunken eyes tracing her every step.

\---

What comes as a surprise is the energy that she still finds in herself even with her crazed work-hours.

There is a weekend on which she literally perfumes the whole building with the scent of sugar, vanilla and oranges because ‘it’s going to be _Festive Time_ and you can’t have that without cookies’ – also the kitchen of Tracksuit Granny is apparently something to die for and she doesn’t hesitate, even one moment, to put it to good use and, in the process, supplies all six of his tenants as well as himself with a shit-load of bakery.

“I didn’t know you baked.”—he says quietly when he finds her standing in front of his door with a basket of the goods in her arms, she can’t sign an answer and he’s still shit at reading lips so she hip-checks his half-opened door aside to gain full entry into the shit-hole that is his apartment.

For a second he panics because he has _not_ cleaned up and god damn it and his kitchen is a mess on his best days, but it’s in a perpetual state of chaos as of right now because he _tried_ to make actual breakfast beyond coffee today and that turned out to be as good an idea as cuddling a porcupine.

She is not, even for the barest hint of a second, phased by this and simply sets down the basket on the one free spot she can find – the stove – before she gives him a small wave.

 _And I didn’t know that you were a human disaster_ —she shoots back with a wry smirk and a small roll of the eyes that takes in even the last corner of his kitchen.

He shoves her out almost forcefully and can feel the shaking of her body under his fingers even as he leans against the door.

\---

Darcy lives on apartment T – they were _numbered_ in the beginning, but Clint had an easier time deciphering single letters instead of a whole array of them forming number-words – just three doors down from his own flat.

She makes no trouble, which is severely suspicious to someone like him and especially in a place like Bed-Stuy, where about 4 per cent of all adults have been incarcerated at least once, 3 percent were or are drug addicted and the lucky 1 percent is mentally ill. He could count on one hand the apartment buildings housing the truly innocent – he somewhat doubted that his own house resided among them.

It’s only when Christmas – Darcy calls it _Festive Times_ because she does not want to step on anyone’s toes – rolls around, that she starts acting dodgy. The red lips still part when he meets her on the stairs and she’ll give him a shy wave, but she won’t _talk_ to him or even meet his eyes and Clint starts to entertain all kind of ideas when he walks past her door where she stands in it, but quickly closes it as she sees him.

He does, however, refrain from breaking and entering her flat out of curiosity.  
But, you know, just barely – for about all of two weeks.

 

###

 

She’s heard of Clint before; kind of.

Back in Puente when she’d first let her fingers fly over a keyboard again after she’d received a _warning_ at Age 15 for looking into a Database she had no business in – she wanted know if her mother had any chance of winning Holidays In Paris; needless to say she didn’t. There hadn’t been a whole lot of intel she’d been able to draw from the little peek she’d snuck at the SHIELD Database, but she’d caught his name… and had promptly asked herself just how stupid a Code-Name _Hawkeye_ could possibly be.

Admittedly that was before New York.

Jane™ had been politely requested as a guest-speaker on a lecture concerning the Urca-process in the formation and evolution of solar systems and had, due to an abrupt and unfouned cut research-funding, not been able to decline the spot which is why the two of them had jetted out to Norway only to realize that they had, conveniently, been carted out of the way of an interdimensional usurpation-attempt.

Needless to say they’d forsaken the lecture in favour of sitting their beautiful posteriors in front of an LED screen an analyse the wormhole as thoroughly as possible from a distance – Jane™ had then proceeded to shout at the poor hapless idiot from SHIELD who’d come to inform her that it was safe to return that she would have been of much more use in New York.

The man had been chagrined but had had the intelligence to _not_ contradict her.

Back then was the first time that Darcy, provided with a high-end screen such as the one Jane™ had been working with, had set eyes onto the man whose ridiculous Code-Name she finally came to understand.

 _Hawkeye_ did not, it appeared, have any love left for the Asgardian Loki and held all the ability to shoot Aliens mid-flight.

She didn’t catch nearly enough shots of the archer, but she was as positive as kitten-memes that the blonde with the sunken eyes was none other than the mysterious Agent she’d snorted about since Puente Antigua.

Her fascination with the second of the non-super-Avengers was cut short when Thor did not, as promised, return to the side of Jane and she had her hands full of heart-broken, workaholic astrophysicist.

It’s not until Thor returned and Jane™ reunited with Erik during the Convergence that she first _heard_ of The Archer and learned that he went by the name Clint – Thor likes to call him Clinton and Darcy regularly had to repress the snorts that threatened to press through her lips when she heard Thor booming about the Great Warrior.

It was, however, also the Big Blonde Lug that reignited her fascination with the man and even went as far as to encourage it – he was already gone again when Darcy realizes just what he did.

Thor is sneaky, okay? Don’t let his Football-Player-Jock-Looks fool you.

\---

Clint looks like a giant, seated on her palette that evening when he quietly admits that his hearing is shot to Hel and likely not to return again and when she admits to the reasons she’s squatting in the basement of his apartment building, he does her the most solid of solids and gives her one of the empty apartments of which, apparently, there are enough in the house above them.

She doesn’t ask too many questions when he mentions an old woman he calls _Tracksuit-Granny_ during the quick guided Tour through the one-room apartment; it may not be much, but it is more than a few mattresses and palettes in an unheated cellar. She pays her rent cash and immediately, argues that she is behind either way considering she’s lived in the house like a free-loader and settles into her four walls without much fanfare.

\---

Thor has explained to her that, while she does not have actual duties as an _afl-hirða_ , there are, for starters, tendencies in her that have been handed down generation for generation ever since the first Lewis had been born. She doesn’t presume to even remotely understand how Thor’s magic-science works, because that is what it devolves into, but if this is something that she’s inherited from the mother she’s never really known, then she’ll gladly take it and roll with it.

She’s good at owning every little piece of her intricacies after all.

So she shovels the stairs when the first snow falls and the ground is too frozen to safely traverse and she bakes a _Mountain_ of Christmas Cookies all in different shapes and variations – from kosher to vegan to halal to gluten-free to absolutely sinful and sugary-fatty-sweet – to hand out to the her co-tenants and Clint; because it’s what she’s good at and she needs to de-compress after another Run-In with the Pimp on Lewis and Lexington that will not stop hounding her.

She snows into Clint’s apartment because he would probably refuse her token of cookies if only for the sake of not appearing to need the charity of others – in the spur of the moment she cannot think of a water-proof argument to get him to accept her delicacies, so she makes perfectly good use of her hips and procures herself access to his own Hobbit-Hole.

 _I didn’t know you were a human disaster_ —she goads him when he tries to dissuade her attention from the veritable pig-sty he apparently lives in and laughs when he promptly steers her out of his Sanctum Sanctorum in a playful wrestle that she does her best to engage in, despite the fact that she’s shaking with mirth at his affronted face.

\---

When she finds him, he’s barely recognizable any more what with the puddle of blood he’s bedded in. One of his eyes seems to be missing and he doesn’t even _move_ when she cries out once she realizes who it is and that tells her all she really needs to know.

There’s no decision to be made.

He’s heavier than she anticipated as she lifts him out of the brown sludge covering the sidewalk but she bears it stubbornly as she speed-walks to the vet she’s not quite sure is actually licensed to do any medicine on a living animal, but it’s their only chance right now.

Her buddy doesn’t even _whine_ when she stumbles and Darcy’s heart almost stops twice before she reaches the run-down door that proclaims the goal of her journey.

“Good boy.”—she whispers as he’s put under, praying that the man _will_ save this one. “Good boy.” Pizza Buddy tiredly licks the back of her hand.

She’s a total mess when she returns to her apartment.

\---

He survives, by some godly miracle and because Darcy has had a rather trying night at the diner – not even the presence of Lance’s officers had made it better – she feels a little stupid around the edges, though she doesn’t hesitate even once when adopting Pizza Buddy; she bets it beats the shelter he’d have gone to otherwise.

The vet gives her a patented look over the rims of his glasses. “You do realize that you have to carry him…”—he tries to dissuade her, but Darcy is already busy stroking the soft ear of a tail-thumping Golden Retriever.

She gives the man a stink eye. “You do realize that I carried him here the first time around…”—she answers with much the same tone he’d just used on her and at least the man notices his error and bows out gracefully after she pays him. It’s cash and on the paw and she seriously thinks she won’t ever come back here with her dog; probably.

Pizza buddy is not any heavier this time around but only when she stands in front of the door of the apartment building does it come to her that she has _not_ asked Clint whether or not it is alright for her to have a pet.

Thus starts the great sneak-around of 2015.  
She should have known that it was not going to last long.

\---

“What’s his name?”—Clint asks as she opens the door and Darcy is so thoroughly shocked at his presence, that she cannot stop her body from reacting violently and throwing a perfectly good bunch of tomatos at his face.

It lands with a juicy squelch and Darcy is frozen in time for that one moment that she watches the red kernels drip from the blonde tips of her propriertor’s hair.

“God motherfucking damn it Clint Francis Barton what the ever loving fuck?!”—she yells when she realizes that, no, she’s not in danger Clint is just a stupid moron who has no concept of private space.

The man has the audacity to smirk as he wipes the red juice from his face; he hasn’t heard her, but she guesses that her relieved slouch is visible even in the darkness of her apartment. She moves her left hand upwards to flick the light on.

 _What the fuck you ass_ —she signs at him, angrily putting her purchases down on the kitchen-island to her right as she stomps up to him, hands on her hips.

“You were acting… weird.”—he defends, hand rising up to the back of his neck as realization sets in just how weak his reasoning sounds. Darcy cocks an eyebrow.

 _Which is why you B and E_ —she continues. Clint pulls a little pout where he’s seated in front of her, one hand still on her dog’s neck – the traitorous bastard is eating the attention up like a starved beast. As if she didn’t spend all of her free hours at his side and with him.

“What’s his name?”—he asks again, right hand now moving consolingly up and down the back of her pet as she hands him a tissue for the residue tomato still clinging to him.

 _Lucky_ —she answers before she turns to close her door. _I found him a few weeks ago. Brought him to the vet. Took him home. Sorry I didn’t ask for permission._

Clint shakes his head at her panicked flurry of hands and fingers. “No need, Darce. Trust me, I…”—he pats Lucky’s flank carefully, “I understand.”

Christmas Morning she finds a dog-biscuit in the shape of Iowa on her doorstep tied with a simplistic, broad, black textile ribbon. She ties it around her neck in a concise replica of the bow she found it in and lets Lucky have at his own treat.

\---

 _God damn it, Barton, you cannot keep doing that_ —she signs angrily after she’s almost decked him the third time now, the pineapple exploding with a loud snap against her kitchen-wall where’s he’s ducked quickly enough to avoid death by tropical fruit.

Lucky is giving happy yips as he goes to lick the delicacy off the floor. Darcy is on her knees, burying her face in her hand. Her heart is racing and she seriously _can’t_ anymore.

“God motherfucking damn, Barton, if you keep breaking and entering into my flat I’m going to get fucking ideas and you cannot come here uninvited – even if it is to lend my dog some much needed company. Do you understand?”—he hasn’t heard her, which is just as well, she surmises, she just had to say this aloud for once. She looks up from her folded hands and groans a little at how close Clint is; head tilted in confusion.

 _You have a master-key to my flat, use it_ —she hesitates at this because it’s giving him 100-percent-access to her Sanctum Sanctorum and there’s a few things she’d rather he’d not see. _Stay out of my bedroom and for god’s sake, turn on the light so I can stop wasting perfectly good fruit on your ugly mug!_

She’s not all too surprised when his face splits into a huge grin. “Awww, Darcy, I knew you _cared_!”

It’s her turn to shove him out of her flat, or at least try to because Clint has to be about twice her weight in muscle-mass and he cleverly evades her until she pulls a dirty trick and moves her fingers to his sides.

“No tickling!”—he capitulates easily, bringing his arms down in a decisive movement that ends up with him holding both of her hands in one massive paw of his – Darcy tries to not let it show how much she really does like the feeling. “But… you’re making _Pizza_ …”

 _Slave-driver_ —Darcy sneers as she claims her hands back. Clint gives her another one of his bright smiles like he knows all too well that they’re her kryptonite.


	5. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long and I've been somewhat unhappy with the way that the story has been going - also... still working on my thesis, but getting to the close, so please bear with me a little longer, I know it's been hell on some of you - for which I'm seriously sorry, but only partially, because I won't apologize for putting RL before AO3 (and no, I don't think this is blasphemy :b). So I hope you enjoy this chapter, it's slowly going where I've planned it to :)

Clint is only a little surprised that Darcy has not had it in her heart to leave a stranded thing like Lucky out in the cold, no matter the consequences. Her salary might just barely suffice to get herself through, but she always has enough money to feed the animal as well as the rest of the tenants – him included – because she has this weird-ass radar that will allow her to turn up with ‘left-overs’ at just the precise time when the grumbling stomach will become vaguely unbearable.

He doesn’t know how she does it.  
Just that he gets into the habit of thinking of dog-food during his rare purchases and sneaking it into her cupboards when she’s not looking.

If she notices that she has a little more money to sustain herself, she doesn’t acknowledge it, but that is quite alright – he is rather good at not acknowledging that she keeps bringing Lasagne and other filling dishes to his front door whenever he thinks about having another slice of pizza that won’t feed him, but at least silence his stomach.

Also, he can’t help but notice that the wrinkles around Simone’s eyes smooth out gradually ever since the appearance of Darcy and her habit to ‘cook too much’ – the twins aren’t shy of showing their appreciation to Darcy with raucous laughter at her inane jokes or even just the regular wave of hands in greeting.

New Year hits them with the gentle _fwump_ of a feathered pillow and he’s not surprised at all to find the collective of his tenants huddled together around a fire-bowl when Darcy finally comes to fetch him.

 _I realized too late that you probably didn’t read the Note I put on your fridge_ —she signs guiltily, as if it was her fault that he is a slob.

She pulls him to the roof at just the right time. Most of the snow has melted already leaving the streets and flat-surfaces cold and wet but not even frozen any longer, Simone is cuddling her boys to her, Deke, Tito and Aimee are squished together under a blanket and he can make out three cans of thermos that he doesn’t doubt are filled with _various_ drinks. Lucky gives happy yips as he dances towards him, tail wagging beautifully and just the slightest hint of a limp in his movements.

Deke gives a bright smile and a holler when he sees them coming up; Clint can only read part of what he says – _man… up… cold… Darcy… here_ – but he’s so enthusiastic and the rest of his tenants give grand smiles as well that he doesn’t hesitate when Darcy pulls him close to her and throws a blanket over his knees that she promptly dives under too.

He is handed a cup and some spiked cocoa that smells like heaven and they stay up on the roof until the fireworks have long gone, until Simone and her boys have fallen asleep in a happy, snuggly heap of family and when even Tito, Deke and Aimee have slumped against each other he’s still awake with Darcy; Lucky burrowed between them for the additional heat.

 _Thank you for taking care of us_ —she signs sometime around three a.m.

The fire is still going merrily, keeping them relatively warm, while the blankets shelter them from the wind that whistles gently around their ears.

 _Pretty sure I have to thank you for that too_ —he responds, albeit shakily and is gifted with the most beautiful smile he’s ever had the pleasure of witnessing.

The last straggling fireworks are going up and he thinks he can imagine the sirens of EMTs as well as the drunken songs of party-goers from the streets; it’s what New Year has always been. Well… at least, _before_ knowing the glamour that was a Stark-thrown party. He wonders if they miss him just the slightest, but pulls the thought back as soon as it enters his mind – no use racking his brain over such trivial bullshit, when he has all he needs right in his grasp.

Darcy moves them to her apartment when they wake with a combination of wit, haggling and coaxing where she cooks up the biggest breakfast either of them has had in a while – there’s hash-browns for the kids, Pancakes for Deke and Clint, Fruits for Tito and Aimee and a gratifying abundance of coffee.

 

\--

 

He can’t help but think that maybe there is some hoodoo involved in the uncanny ability of Darcy Lewis to make people feel at home, bullying them just the right amount and helping when she knows it’s needed, but he has no proof and he is awfully unwilling to upset her and have her move out; because that would be a disaster.

Clint doesn’t even doubt it though. So he doesn’t ask.  
You know, for now.

\--

 

January takes it easy on them. Clint gets out more often, un- or willingly, joined a lot, lately, by Daredevil on his patrols that he has unknowingly started until they evolved into a full-blown Neighbourhood Watch Thing. Kind of.

Because while that might be a cute cover, it’s flimsy at best and Neighbourhood Watch sure as hell doesn’t put projectiles through people or clobber them down before delivering them to the closest precinct.

He’s not a killer though.

What he’s doing might verge on criminal vigilantism given his circumstances, but if the news have reached Avengers Tower his former team mates are not lifting any voices or fingers and considering Anthony Stark had ears and eyes everywhere should he so want, Clint takes that as his Go-Ahead. And runs with it.

 

\--

 

The first time he actually _meets_ the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is in his dumpster.

Literally.  
The man amongst the plastic-bags has the gall to give him a grand smile as he opens the lid and says _Step into my office_ in what Clint imagines to be a cocky drawl.

Clint is better now at reading lips. It’s still mostly hit and miss, but he’s started to get real good at piecing together the meaning of a sentence if he could somewhat guess the intent of the person by their body language and catch enough words.

It’s one of the things he has Darcy to thank for – mostly because once she realized he was learning how to read lips she exposed him to so. many. fucking. people that he was almost cross with her. If it weren’t for the fact that it actually worked.

Also, she had this habit of taking him with her during Lucky’s walk, plonk themselves down on whatever park-bench was available and make up life-stories of passing people with him. For Bonus points she would imitate a fantasized dialogue to mock him whenever she could see someone’s mouth – he’d gotten better at it just to have the satisfaction of contradicting her.

Darcy is pretty awesome.

And once he has accepted the fact that the cowled street hero of Hell’s Kitchen tends to end up in one or the other dumpster around the city and actually goes out of his way to bring the idiot back, at the very least to his home turf, they kind of become acquaintances.

Clint pushes Melvin Potter’s address into the mangled hand of the Masked Idiot one morning and doesn’t know what he has done until buildings explode around New York and _Daredevil_ is being held responsible for it.

The Avengers head out to bring the Masked Vigilante to justice.  
Hawkeye intents to beat them to it.

 

\--

 

Matt Murdock is a blind son of a no-name boxer and, in his free-time, dons a bullet-proof costume and fights crime.

The first time he meets Hawkeye is at Arrow-Point with no way out. The man cannot hear him – he’s learned this as Daredevil – but the song of the arrow-string lets him know that one wrong movement and the projectile will embed in his body deep enough to stop him at least from running. Normally he’d be afraid that it’d pierce and go through-and-through, but Melvin’s design is supposed to be able to stop bullets so he’s not quite certain on that point.

Carefully he raises arms, grimaces at the angry twinge of his left shoulder; it feels dislocated. His right hand wipes at his face’s lower half to make his mouth more visible, hoping that at least, maybe, lip-reading is a thing that deaf people can do.

“Can I step into your office for a change?”—he asks, the attempt at dry humour passing by the fighter in front of him; light feet shuffle closer, the archer becoming deadlier each centimetre he nears his body.

Matt just wants to call it day.

 

\--

 

Clint Barton meets Matthew Murdock on the couch of Darcy Lewis the next morning after she’s patched him up.

Hawkeye has had his doubts about Daredevil being the one to set off those bombs, especially given the fact that they had been placed too strategically and in quarters that the masked crusader has recently visited in order to secure. Given the fact that the development of the wounds on the prone man had been some time in the making it could not have been the very person he shipped off to his apartment complex.

He doesn’t know how Darcy got caught up in all of it.

One moment he is schlepping the heavy and mostly immobile body of one Daredevil up towards his apartment and the next, there she is, standing in the hallway with a Taser in one hand and her phone in the other.

She does not hesitate to bustle them both into her own four walls.

 _I have the better med-kit_ —she silences him when he tries to argue. _I also have bandaged you so you know I’m capable._

"Could we use our voices, please?"—Daredevil asks verbally and Clint barely catches it from the corner of his eyes, but Darcy cuts the man a scathing look, fingers twitching mid-air, before she responds too quickly for Clint to read. He doesn’t doubt, by the way that most of the air leaves the man on his side in a whoosh that it’s quite the tongue lashing he’s getting though. Because Darcy Lewis can be fucking protective.

 _Put him on the couch_ —she orders him; Clint is smart enough to recognize it for what it is and heeds the command. Daredevil sinks into the cushioning with a slightly parted mouth indicating a sigh.

Darcy ducks behind the Counter for a moment, retrieving her Medical Kit, before she returns, signing for him to help her. She doesn’t move for the mask of the other man other than to quickly run her fingers over the material, checking for scrapes that might be new and have an impact on the all-over health of the man in front of her.

Clint is almost jealous of the way that she keeps talking to him where he can only catch words now and then, especially because she is seeing a lot more of the body of the man than she probably anticipated and even he can admit that the man has the stellar physique of an accustomed fighter. Nothing Clint doesn’t have… but he hasn’t quite been like this in front of Darcy.

The thought strikes him as odd later – when she has told the man in the mask to stay there and not move while she is clearing away the emptied wrappings and her Med-Kit, Clint hanging around the apartment undecidedly.

 _You’re staying, right?_ —she signs to him when he makes a first step towards the door.

He doesn’t know if she’s managed to guess his intentions, but he changes course nevertheless, sets down his bow and his arrows in the crook of her kitchen-counter, well shielded from curious eyes entering through the front door, but equally easy to access in any case.

“You wanna go to sleep?”—he asks quietly because it’s only occurred to him about ten minutes ago when he threw a cursory glance at her kitchen-watch that it is well past her bed-time and she has work tomorrow. Or at least, given today’s surprise explosions, he hopes she still has a place to go to work to.

 _Keyed up_ —she responds instead. _But if I put my ass in bed and fall asleep, will you wake me up at five-thirty?_

Clint nods; steps closer after only a moment of hesitance arms partly elevated at his sides. ‘Keyed up’ is a feeling he can relate to, has dealt with nearly all his life and he can vividly imagine the sensation of her blood buzzing under her skin; Bobbi has generally reacted positively to body-contact in those instances, but he cannot in good conscience compare his ex-wife to Darcy.

But she steps into his offered embrace without even the barest second of thinking about it.

She reaches his nose if she stands straight, but right now her body instinctively curls in on itself as she fits herself under his chin and into his shoulder, where she burrows as her arms fold into themselves and between them. For as much as Clint is aware that Darcy Lewis can be a force to be reckoned with, she feels fucking small against him right now – he doesn’t know if he should be as grateful for that as a part of him feels; he doesn’t really want to frankly.

Carefully broadening his stance, he pulls her closer still, enveloping her in his arms, allowing himself to become her blanket for just this moment, shielding her from the reality she usually works so hard to make easier on others – he figures it’s his turn to give back.

It doesn’t hurt either that her every curve is pressed against his angles and he cannot remember when last he has felt so strong and able to protect somebody. He feels like he could move a mountain if it were dumb enough to threaten her.

He also feels a little ridiculous for liking it.

 

###

 

The day after she meets The Devil Of Hell’s Kitchen she goes to a work-place that is closed. Han tells her, when she calls him, that they would make good money if she were to open the Diner, which she knows they will, but that she might want to call on some back-up from somewhere considering that it’s likely she’ll be overrun.

Darcy sucks it up and opens alone.

Lance and his men are one of her first customers and having anticipated them, she pours them their Big Boy Styrofoam Cups and gives some of the more tired ones a healthy helping of sugar for the way.

“You gonna do this by yourself?”—Lance wonders as she sends one of their shop-neighbours off with a little extra cookie before she turns to him.

“I’m a big girl, Officer.”—she teases him, braver than she really feels. “That Devil can waltz right in here and I’d still be sellin’ coffee an’ cake.”

Her drawl is almost provocative because she seriously wants to know what the stand of the 88th is towards the man on her couch and she’s not too surprised when Lance’s eyes shutter a little at the mention of The Devil. She’s breached the topic for a reason after all.

“You really think that was him?”—the man asks her quietly, pushing around his coffee with idle fingers; it’s a practiced image of nonchalance that she usually wouldn’t associate with Officer Lance Peyton.

Darcy has prepared herself for that question. “My momma always said you can’t look into the min’ of a man.”—she responds carefully, Texas drawl pushing through. She has noticed his weakness for the lilt and is only somewhat ashamed to use it to her advantage, but a girl’s got to know her weapons and how to use them.

“Between us though,”—she returns to her polished speech, shows him that she means no harm in her titter, “I think it’s a little weird for a  person to want to bomb a city that they’ve come to protect these last few weeks.”

Lance looks lighter within the blink of an eye; she almost misses the minute lowering of his shoulders that indicate their having risen at all – she stows the information away for later contemplation of the indications behind that.

“Yeah.”—he agrees silently as he stands, his men behind him following his silent command and copying his motion, rising from their various seats at different tables. “Sure beats me.”

 

\--

 

When Clint tries to stalk past her in the hallway in the evening, Darcy doesn’t even tap down on the annoyance that makes itself known in her and instead, flickers the light on and off like she’s seen in some of the movies dealing with acoustically impaired people – it’s supposed to draw their attention in a not too surprising way.

She doesn’t know where the agitation comes from doesn’t want to inspect its provenance right now.

There is a second-suit not too far from her, too, reddish-brown-black, two little elevations at the front of his head.

“You’re both stupid.”—she remarks when she leaves the light on and finds both Daredevil and Hawkeye in full regalia mere steps from her. Clint has the decency to look somewhat sheepish.

 _I know you’re going out there, it‘s not like I’m born on the moon_ —she tells Clint off. _At least have the balls to tell me to my face._

Daredevil says nothing; looks to Clint – quite literally – to take over the situation. It’s the first time that she truly sees him in his tactical gear, though she has to admit that it’s a lot darker than she has always imagined it to be. She’s expected way more purple to be honest. But to be frank, save for the stylised arrow on his chest, there is barely any of Clint’s favourite colour to be seen.

“Darce…”—he tries, she gives him that, but it doesn’t continue from there, so she heaves a silent sigh and just shakes her head, raising her hands to sign as she talks.

_“I know you’re going out, doing what you’re going. Take care, don’t be dumber than usual and don’t try to sneak past me again like I’m the dragon here.”_

“You’d make an impressive dragon though.”—Clint lets her know before they slip out of the door and into the night.

 

\--

 

If Wilson Fisk falls the next day in a more or less public fight with Daredevil and if the Avengers happen to get caught in various states of captivity by projectile then the news certainly know what piece of information to prioritize. Save for the Bugle, bothering only to hoist the headline _Everything Awful_ – which: seriously? – and focusses on the erosion of the position of the ‘mere human’ in a society in which super-heroes take over the day-to-day-discourse.

It’s weak at best, and Darcy is much more interested in the short series of photographs issued alongside of the article – they’re decent and she makes a note of the name, if only to free herself from the overly angry tirade about the oppression of the little man fighting for a decent life in a world dominated by irrational super-vigilantes of what appears to be the editor-in-chief.

She opens the Diner armed with two freshly made chocolate cakes that make her a good additional penny and got her to exert all her nervous energy throughout the night as well as all of her Texan Charm that she lays on thickly, garnering mostly tired but grateful smiles.

Darcy is especially happy to manage and calm down a worried mother that hasn’t heard from their child ever since the news of the abrupt violence in the city has made it onto the TV – granted she has a lot of help from one of Lance’s officers, but even the man gives her a grateful smile when she pipes in with positive comments every now and then, accompanied by some hot cocoa and a slice or two of her cake, on the house. They deal just fine.

But then, she realizes as she walks home, her regular entourage of hungry mouths trailing behind her with an air of anxiety, that is exactly what the city is doing: dealing. She buys too many pizza-slices from The Pizza-Cart and leaves them carefully wrapped on a dumpster in a side-street, turning her head only once as she rounds a corner to get a glimpse of the hungry people that still around the parcel and gobble up the treat – two of them follow her with tired, but grateful, eyes and a slice each.

It seems that after the invasion from another planet, New York City can only barely catch a breath before some other kind of disaster strikes – this time in the form of obvious terrorist attacks by the likes of what is soon discovered to be Wilson Fisk. Darcy can feel the sickening punch in the gut that many desperate city dwellers wake up with these days from having believed in The Strong Man to clean up the streets.

Maybe it is her soft-science major that has taught her to be suspicious of easy political solutions; history shows that most of them have dark dealings in the background.

However she does understand the pain of reality now catching up with those who’d hopefully looked towards this man to help them.

When she comes back from her shift, it’s the first time that Clint is waiting in her apartment with the lights on.

It’s also the first time she catches him sleeping and does not have the will-power to flick the switch and wake him up. Lucky, from where he is splayed over the human perch the archer has unwittingly turned into, watches her as she quietly puts together some Curry.

 

\--

 

Darcy’s world narrows down in the next few weeks to _Work – Clint – Lucky – Home_ ; sometimes including _Matt Murdock_. Him having bled on her couch has apparently granted her the privilege to know his name, or so he argues, although she has a feeling that this has more to do with the fact that she is aware of Clint’s alter-ego and still alive and breathing.

When she has the time, she bakes additional cakes and cookies to hand out amongst the tenants, drawn tighter and thinner each day as they amble through the city. It gets better every day, on the surface, houses are repaired, people are healed, but the rifts and cracks in the psyche of the inhabitants of the never-sleeping-city, those that frown over their book-shop closing, their coffee-shop destroyed by explosion, those that have to mourn a loved one are barely thought of and she can tell that it gnaws on them.

A part of her wonders if people are starting to feel like she does when thinking about her Jane and the comfortable position at her side that she’s been forced to abandon – it’s a sentiment she would not ever have wished on anyone, despite the fact that she is coping the best she can.

She started political sciences because she wanted to understand the system that made people tick these days; she wanted to know how it worked and what it needed – and there was also, sometimes, the desire to know what needed to be changed.

Even before she’d finished her degree, however, she’d come to the conclusion that political action was often insufficient in dealing with the pains of people as were – in the long run, naturally, the correct programme would help a-many, and it was always better than just leaving things the way they were. But Darcy did not like thinking of those that sacrificed as ‘necessary’ – on a personal level, she knew (wished) that those who had put many great movements into motion and suffered for their cause had not needed to do the latter.

And so she sets out to help the way she could best.

 

\--

 

Thor was well aware of the happenings on Earth, albeit them plaguing him even in his slumber; especially these days in which he cultivated a much closer relationship with Heimdall – the all-seeing _áss_ – than he previously had during his Golden Days on Asgard when he had had but play of swords and bed in mind.

His Lady Jane had, coming out of one of her much renowned _science-binges_ \- _afl-hirða_ Darcy had named them thusly – recently realized that her most trusted companion for years had been pressed to leave her side due to the termination of the treaty that had assured her continued permission to enter the premises of Stark’s Tower.

He has not before seen the true face of rage where His Lady Jane was concerned, for he is certain that he would have remembered such fearsome a mask that settled over the beautiful face of his beloved. As it is, she has not mustered this kind of ill-intent even when his own father had compared her to an animal, and a most base one at that.

But the absence of her own Lady Darcy, her _afl-hirða_ , had put her into such a state of emotion that she had been sheer unwilling to even think about returning to her work-station or listen to any of the words that the warriors and leaders at SHIELD could possibly attempt to calm her with.

Thor was unusually complacent in this, despite the fact that his inaction punished him with every day, for the Norns had unveiled to him a vision lest he might interfere in their plans – it was not his design, for these beings held the very Thread Of Fate in their ghoulish hands. And so, as much as it pained him, he stood aside and let his _systir_ go; hopeful that she might return from her quest more centred and grown than she had been before.

He does, however, regularly take the freedom to have Heimdall look for her and recount about her well-being. For he is still her brother and it would be egregiously negligent in not making certain that she might be well.

It is thusly that it might he has glimpsed a plan of the Norns, for he has been informed of her novel proximity to the Archer Clinton – news which, at first, greatly comforted him for he still does hold the man in highest regards; despite his bodily misgivings which have, apparently, been enough reason to ask of him to leave the brotherly band of The Avengers.

Thor is not certain if this was the right decision, but he has learned to stand by the decisions made for the Norns have plans for every single being around the Nine Realms.

Knowing that both _afl-hirða_ Darcy and the Archer Clinton have found each other in one place allows him to breathe easier and wonder if, maybe, the reason for the Norns to send him the vision has been another one all-together, given that this alliance may enter into his realm of responsibilities.

 

\--

 

It starts when Darcy bears precious cargo to the door-step of her Diner one day and as she opens up, puts out a box filled to the brim with a fuck-ton of scarves, hats and gloves that she has made time and leisure for to make in the last few weeks.

When Lance smiles at her in that surprised-pleased way she has first seen when she has introduced him to Aislin, she knows that she is yet another step closer to actually becoming a good person.

Homeless folk and Curious Georges alike stop next to the box to root around in it and find a pair of gloves that will fit them, or even exchange an old hat for a new, warmer one, leaving the worn head-wear next to the box. During the lulls in her shift, she carefully watches the coming and going and feels the warmth of each soft smile or nod that finds its way through the window-pane and to her.

The 88th is there the next day with their Swear-Jars from all over the departments, intent on buying coffee, tea, hot cocoa and a hot meal for whoever might brave the Diner – Han has to come help out because Darcy finds herself swamped; she has not in a long time felt this content.

 

\--

 

When the wear-and-tear starts to heal around her, Darcy finally allows herself to slow down a little and instead look out for those who might be ready to share – grief comes in stages after all and Darcy likes to think that she has mastered them, even though her degree says political science and not psychology, given the fact that she has guided two scientists through grand emotional upheaval as well as several of her System Buddies.

Aimee is the first to admit that she has lost someone.

It happens by chance and when the young woman catches herself spilling the literal beans to Darcy over a box of Cookies she made because it’s Sunday – that is a totally valid reason, shut up – and a cup of tea, she forcefully stops herself, re-evaluating the situation. Darcy waits it out with her, silent, despite being aware of what is happening and allowing herself to feel just a smidgen of pride when Aimee decides to continue confiding in her.

Her co-tenant tells her stories about her Grams and her days in the USO, touring with The Captain America; due to unstable construction the neighbouring house close to one of the explosions had crumbled onto the frail body of the elderly woman and buried her. Needless to say that the bike-messenger has found herself at odds these last weeks – Darcy is familiar with the period of _not-being_ , the window of processing, in which the events catch up with the rationale and one realizes that this is now, indeed, reality.

Usually this revelation is quite the bitter pill to swallow and Darcy is not surprised when they graduate from Tea to Tequila.

She is forever grateful for Clint, though, who later carries her upstairs and to her own apartment like the total bro he is.


	6. Small Interlude I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting back into the groove after a long absence, feeling out the 'old coat'

He is not at home when the news of _Captain America: Fugitive_ blindside the News-stations, blinking at him through the shop-window of an electronic-store’s TV-exhibit.

Clint hasn’t been in contact with his former team-mates since he had been relieved from his station among them, but even then he can smell something fishy going on – Steve is the most paragonous paragon of virtue that America has ever had and Clint’s pizza-slice hits the ground in front of the shop as he turns to hightail towards Bed-Stuy like a mad-man possessed.

Despite the fact that he is too far out to make it to the house on time in case anything would happen, he doesn’t even spare a thought to taxis or the metro. His very bones tell him something _will happen_ and to _move the fuck faster_ – he doesn’t break his running stride even as he pushes past Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock on a corner.

On any other day it would be a funny coincidence and the perfect opportunity to tease Matt, but Clint is unable to think about anything else than _Darcy – home, alone, unprotected_. He feels sorry for elbowing Matt’s friend in hindsight.

By the time he is in Williamsburg, SHIELD Heli-Carriers are rising from the Triskelion and Clint’s worry morphs into an overpowering sentiment he knows intimately but has always been unwilling to acknowledge. He doesn’t know what they do, but he knows what one Heli-Carrier is capable of and to have three of the beasts rise from their stations is a fucking scary thing.

Suddenly it’s no longer just Darcy.   
It’s his whole house.   
It could be all of America – the whole _world_.

His steps falter for the barest of moments and the power of inertia tricks him into stumbling before he uncaps the lid on his anger and forces his feet through the pull of gravity, speeding up, pushing through people.

When he finally barrels through his front door, he is pumped so full of adrenaline that the merest glimpse of a black barrel pointing towards him catapults him into a dodge-and-roll before feels the whistle of a bullet sail over his left shoulder and as he stands he barely manages to hold back from breaking the wrist of his assailant.

Darcy’s glasses reflect in the shine of the laptop before her; barrel not smoking exactly, but perfectly lined up in front of her; her red lips drawn into an unrepentant frown.

He doesn’t yell. “Tenants.”—he snaps at her instead, needs to know.

“ _Cellar_.”—she answers just as curtly, returning to clacking on her keyboard at astounding speed. “ _Lead walls.”_ Clint has never been so relieved to technically have stolen, even though it was an entirely legal action, a house from the Russian Mob.


	7. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SHIELD falls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daredevil cameos :3

Darcy doesn't know what happens when breaking news flash at her on a lazy Wednesday, customers at the Diner leaving out, that Captain America should be Enemy Number One and before she knows what is really happening, the shop is closed – Han has his Spa-Day; she doesn’t know why it always has to be during _upheavals –_ and she is running along the streets like a woman possessed.

The pit of her stomach roils and swims in her as if it were a ship at the mercy of a tempest and her breath comes short with every wave of nausea that threatens to grab her just thinking about her people, defenseless, and the turmoil lengthens her strides and bends her body through the mass of fucking stagnant people that can’t decide whether or not to move from the boardwalk they can see the news from.

Her Curious Georges are a-flurry around her, the younger folk tagging along at her speed over the roof-tops and giving signs to the older folk about her whereabouts – because she’s learned these streets by now; she knows what back-alleys to take, which dogs to trust and what fire-escapes to avoid and she is quicker than many of their old bones can still cooperate. It has never occurred to her, until now, that she has become a regular little vigilante of her own.

Another, powerful, pang of fear grips her when she thinks about the young faces that follow her and she wants to yell at them, loud, angry and scared, to find a hidey-hole and stay there until the storm has passed because if Captain Flarking America is being accused of treason then shit was about to go down heavy and she’s not certain she wants any of them out in the open while it happened.

But when she reaches the run-down apartment complex and shoulders her way through the door, she turns in the entryway only to find that the roof-tops are empty and there are no eyes on her.

She’s not gentle when she systematically ushers the tenants into the mob-bunker she had discovered during her days of sleeping rough under this roof and when the door closes, Lucky is the last to be kicked inside, a tinge of regret biting at her when she listens to his confused yap just as the lead-door falls shut.

But Darcy Lewis has work to do.

She hasn’t really tampered with codes since Puente Antigua and the mystical appearance of the mighty _áss_ that was Thor Odinson (now her brod) but she is well aware that whatever has gotten Captain America into a pinch might cost his former team-mate just as dearly, especially if the red-head on screen, keeping a close eye on The Stars And Spangles, is who she thinks she is.

Whatever is happening, and by then she’s not even certain what _is_ happening, could cost Clint.  
And what costs Clint could cost the tenants – could cost her people.

Like hell is she going to let that happen.  
Nuh-uh.

So she sits herself down as the first line of defense – second, technically, considering the door – and plops the mostly legal fire-weapon she’s been permitted to carry since Tromsø into her lap, perching her notepad on her knees and gets to work like she hasn’t in what feels like ages.

She thinks she can hear the unused, dusty synapses creak in her head and smoke away the cobwebs – but she could have had a perfectly good seat in an IT-university if she hadn’t butchered her chance when she was seven and too curious for her own good, and her fingers remember sooner than she would have anticipated and her mind’s gears soon run like a well-oiled machine.

So much so that the entirety of what is happening outside of the flimsy wooden door in front of her is at her literal fingertips.

Clint splinters through the frame at a mostly opportune moment because in any other case she would not be able to attest for her reflexes in these situations, but she has been pausing, taking in the magnitude of what this _means_ and what it will mean in the near future – for her, for Clint, for her Jane and for the Avengers Initiative in large – when the door opens and her fingers have already grabbed for the gun, firing a shot before her brain has caught up on the situation and computes the movement properly.

In hindsight, she is probably lucky that the blond does not snap her wrist – because, boy did she need it.

It takes Clint all of five minutes to make certain that all the tenants are indeed where she has told him they are and to fetch the entirety of his gear, barreling past her just as the door opens a second time and her hand is already closing around the gun, shot about to lose itself, when his hand snaps against hers from behind and stops her from shooting Matthew Murdock, bringing along a bewildered looking group of young people.

“Keep them safe and I have your back.”

And because Darcy knows that Clint is about to go out – damn the consequences – she stands before the Archer can argue the point and ushers the four people into the same bunker that the rest of the tenants is in, before turning toward the man who has become the Daredevil.

“You watch him, Murdock, or I swear to all that was holy to my Grandmother, I will spit on your grave after I’ve buried you.”

He doesn’t answer her outright, but nods and bounds after Clint when the archer brushes past them with brisk steps and a grim visage she doesn’t precisely see.

Her hands shake a little more when she sits down, again, to go over the data she has on her screen. She doesn’t know what it means – but she’s well aware of what it _could_ mean (The Red Scare; The Red Winter; The Black Ghost – my lord but the man has had a lot of names in her studies and lectures) and when pawns pop up on the playing field around New Triskelion like mushrooms after rain, Darcy’s fingers fly like the USS Enterprise – Warp speed – to catch and siphon the important tidbits of Natalia Romanovna, of Steven Grant Rogers, of Clint Barton, of Nicolas Fury, of Thor Odinson – and by relation herself and Jane. The rapid in-pour of information is almost impossible to dilute and secure, but Darcy manages, by some grace, to store and safe-guard the heavy load of it within the course of several hours, fighting, at the end of the day, not only with fatigue setting in from a lowering adrenaline level, but over this or that additional morsel of information that she has to pry out of the cybernetic fingers of one very clever little thing that she’s decided to piggy-back in order to surprise at the most inopportune moments and collect the information for herself.

She doesn’t know who _EdWyN_ is but the old coot sure has some tricks up his sleeve. Kudos to you.

Whatever has happened – and she’s not quite certain what it is that has transpired, just that SHIELD blew a gasket or something – it is slowly coming to a halt; leaving New Triskelion in rubble and ashes, with Captain America as the perpetrator who fought tooth and nail to protect the innocent inhabitants of America from The Winter Soldier – if that is his current name – and from what appears to have been SHIELD itself. Not, granted, that the general populace is aware of the last little tidbit; luckily for them.

It doesn’t make _sense_ is the thing.

Now that she has the time to actually process what has been happening, none of the puzzle pieces seem to fit in with one another; they don’t make a whole.

There’s the sudden announcement of Captain America being Enemy Number One;  
There’s the appearance of the Man Who Doesn’t Die;  
There’s Carriers rising from SHIELD;  
There’s Captain America going up against SHIELD carriers with company;  
There’s the sudden Data Dump;  
There’s SHIELD carriers crashing;  
And now there’s silence.

She has kept herself back from looking for Clint and Murdock – mostly because she knows, even know, that she can’t allow herself to go looking for them; otherwise she might unearth something in the ensuing frenzy of not immediately finding them, and she doubts she would, and call unwanted attention to them. Given how hard she’s worked on preventing exactly that, even sitting on pins and needles stealing a dwindling number of data from _Ed_ , is more productive than to alert whatever scoundrels lurked out there, declaring Mister Apple-Pie a wanted fugitive, to their current position.

And so Darcy steels herself and waits.  
Not something she is very good at, but she prevails.

Because it’s always in the lull after the rush of battle that most mistakes happen.

Thor taught her that.  
Darcy has no room for error here.

 

\--

 

Come the morning, Clint returns with Matt on his side. They limp through deserted streets, littered with trash from the day before and when she gets the announcement that somebody is getting too close around the perimeter she’s set – might be a few traffic cameras are at her beck and call – she almost jerks up from that sweet, cotton dimension in-between sleep and wakefulness. Neither of them look good – Matt is limping and has an arm around Clint’s shoulders that looks as if it’s holding the blond together at the seams – but the fact alone that they have returned and she has not needed to lift her weapon a third time indicates that they are as well as they can be.

There hasn’t been any word from the bunker all night while Darcy buried incriminating documents and data all over the globe – she doesn’t even know _what_ it is that she buried; just that she did. And that she did it well.

Both of them are eerily quiet when they reach the door she’s opened to them – Clint either ignores or doesn’t see the weapon she’s hidden in the kangaroo-bag of the hoodie she’s stolen from him for tonight – and they don’t even try to appear to be standing on their own two feet and she wonders, briefly, if they even could. But that is good, she thinks, it means nothing too bad happened. Matt wouldn’t stand for repeat performances of horror and she doesn’t think Clint would want him to; in a way those two have very much found each other.

“They’re okay?”--Matt asks her when she closes the door behind her; nodding at one of her Curious Georges, giving her a questioning look through yellow-stained eyes.

“Sleeping like a bunch-a-babies.”--she replies before she turns around, giving them a cursory once over. “You should be too.”

Matt looks like he wants to say something; probably something about her own sleepless night – and he would be right, so she shuts him up with a well-aimed push of her thumb into a sore muscle. It’s a gently push, mind you, but it’s enough to let the man know that he better not say a thing.

Clint is giving her tired eyes.  
_You gonna be okay, cowboy?_

The blond nods – a little too careful about the motion of his head and she checks his eyes shortly to see that, indeed, she might be needed still to wake up her human disaster every hour; if only to make certain he stays alive.

 _Sleep?_ \--she asks.

 _Wound up_. --he spells for her, having only one hand free what with the other being occupied by Matt; she doesn’t think they’re going to be staying long.

_Wanna come down after you put him to bed?_

Again he nods. Carefully.  
She’s going to feel better about protecting the front and taking care of his sleep-cycle if he’s right next to her.

 

\--

 

Darcy doesn’t ask what happened.

A part of her thinks that she should; especially the part of her that has studied politics and would like to know what the flarking flark The Winter Soldier was doing in DC and how the hell Clint himself managed to get there so fast and why for god’s sake SHIELD is now in ruins.

But she doesn’t ask.  
And she should be given a medal for it – just saying.

What she does do is wake Clint Barton up every hour, just for five minutes, just enough to settle him into a new resting position and let him know that nothing has happened and everything is alright. Her stair-buddy takes it with the quiet resignation of someone who’s lived through too many concussions in his life, but he doesn’t complain either so that’s something, she thinks.

The day passes slowly, quietly and keeps Darcy on her toes like nothing before while she squirrels away intel that she hasn’t even had a peek at.

 _EdWyN_ tries to ping her once or twice; old coot even goes as far as to attempt to piggy-back her like she did to him in order to recuperate the morsels she’s stolen from him – but Darcy Lewis is made from other stuff and because she’s bored, she sends out a few small data bots with no particular information to elsewhere, giving herself cover for hiding the real data.

Whoever wants the information so badly that they’re falling for her small decoys is currently getting the Top 100 of her iTunes list. She hopes they know to appreciate it.

Matt comes down the stairs five hours later, coffee pot in one hand, three mugs in the other and he sits himself down with them quietly – the door has been opened, letting in the fresh spring air and sun and Darcy is not quite surprised when the scent of the bean rouses their bunker-friends, ensuing in a questing knock against the lead door.

_Can I let them out?_

Clint nods still with great care, but his eyes are searching the horizon for something – someone – before he nods again, raising himself to his elbows from his awkward position on the stairs.

_Get more mugs?_

It’s Darcy who nods before moving both her hands in an angled fashion together and apart. _Rooftop?_

The blond nods.  
Rooftop it is.

 

\--

 

Simone doesn’t feel safe.  
Darcy can tell by the way that she keeps calling her boys to her side and her eyes keep looking for something to jump at her from behind, from the side, from god knows where – she’s even searching the skies.

And as much as Darcy wants to tell her that it’s alright, it’s okay, most of the danger has passed… is it really the truth?

They survived another gig, sure, but even with her working through the night to bury Clint’s ownership of this house they are likely to be targets; or become targets one day. She wonders if she, in Simone’s position, would think any different and comes up empty.

So she sits herself down next to the woman with a cup of coffee-cocoa – it’s a Matthew Murdock special apparently, both blonds at his side have sworn so – and lets her eyes glide over the assembled crowd.

Her crowd.

“I’d be sad to see you go.”--she quietly confides in the dark-skinned woman. “I love your kids and I loved doing Kwaanza with you guys.”--she pauses, looks at her mug and then Simone, “But I understand that you have to think about the little ones. And I understand that you want a better place to raise ‘em.”

And Simone, bless her beautiful heart, she gives a tired smile and turtles up; hunches her shoulders until they fight for space with her ears and stares at the ground between her feet. “I don’t want to be ungrateful.”--she admits. And Darcy can see that too – the indecision to leave Clint’s side when she has, from what Darcy has garnered in several talks with the rest of the residents, been the catalyst for Barney Barton to even buy an apartment here, leaving Clint – who got wind of that story only much later – to feel responsible for her even though Simone had not ever considered it that way.

“You’re not.”--Darcy lets her now, slings an arm around her shoulders and pulls her towards herself; Simone needs hugs and she doesn’t get them often enough. “Clint will understand.”

It doesn’t occur to Darcy until much later that Simone has probably not slept a lot even in the relatively safe confines of the bunker – giving, instead, the chance for her boys to catch some Zs while creating as much a comfortable space as she could. By then the older woman is already sleeping next to her and Clint is offering a thick throw to cover her.

 

\--

 

Clint understands.

 _Have been thinking of a way to try to propose it to her respectfully—_ he admits when Darcy comes to talk to him about it and because she loves computers and everything to do with them and Clint is not one to make her halt before the law. Matt is a little dubious about it, but he is at hand when it comes to properly doing the right documents to pass as another person.

Their small family loses its last name and because their paperwork has, apparently, always been a little suspicious Darcy goes full out and creates everything for them – Clint buys them a small house with Barney’s money and by the end of the week one of their apartments is empty.

Darcy finds Clint on the roof that evening and doesn’t bother to think about their competitive streak as they match each other for every bottle of beer. She doesn’t remember much in the morning either, but that’s okay – neither does Clint.

 

 

###

 

 

Clint doesn’t know what the ever loving fuck is happening, and he doesn’t have the time to question Nat as he seriously wants to – but she’s gone as off grid as is possible during an op and he doesn’t doubt that, at one point, she is going to literally drop from the ceiling in an impressive flip the kinds of which he’s always been jealous of not being able to replicate a hundred percent, never mind the fact that he was – had been, probably – as flexible and acrobatically fluent as her.

Daredevil is next to him as they make their way past the closed doors and through security – heading for the main controls.

Nat indicated there might be lower agents in need of a rescue. Hawkeye might have been out of commission for some time now but he’s good to go; enough to tip a toe back into the fold of what might be SHIELD or might be the remnants of it – he knows what those carriers can do and what the _fuck_ are they doing in the air – and clear the lower levels.

He has, too, absolutely no compunctions about taking Daredevil with him.  
Hawkeye might be deaf, but he sure as hell is not dumb.

_No matter how much Darcy might argue against that._

The hallways are eerily quiet, orange signal lights turned off and the whole building seems to operate on emergency energy, flooding its insides with sickly-greenish light. They’re in the undergrounds – SHIELD bowels, where work the ‘lower life forms of the agency’.

Darcy’s words.  
She knows the ins and outs of SHIELD’s off-mission-work better than he does. Paperwork and the people behind the background-work were never much his thing – not that he is actually alone in this; he’s not making excuses when he says that this hierarchy is a structure promoted by SHIELD. The less people know each other, the less anyone can be compromised.

Fury thinks he’s learned from ‘Phil’s demise’.

He takes Daredevil’s hands into his own in the safety of a small corner.  
_Meet up point here. Elevator round the corner. Take out bad guys. Get small fries to safety._

The red horns nod at him and splits from his sides on the quietest soles known to mankind. Or at least Clint assumes so – he can’t actually hear squat.

Which bites him in the ass about a click into the corridor of his choosing – somebody clocks him from behind and if his head hadn’t built up the resistance it has, he’d have a concussion. He goes down with the hit, allows the wooziness to ground him before he turns and kicks his attacker in the nuts.

He might not have perfect vision; or incoming sound; but he can gauge the approximate shape above him as its lower half sags in on itself and almost buries him in its ensuing down-fall and Clint rolls away just brief enough to roll back a moment later and bury his elbow in the exposed back-head of his aggressor.

His eyes adjust and he grabs his gear a little faster when he notices just _what_ is drawn on the sleeve around the man’s upper arm.

Fucking skeleton cephalopods.

Devil won’t be able to see ‘em so maybe he won’t be knowin’ what kind’a shit he’s gotten himself into any time soon – but he knows, oh boy he know this ain’t gon’ bring the good kind’a press SHIELD’s wanted.

God this’s gon’ rain hellfire on their asses.

He’s up in a second, quiver safe around his shoulder, projectiles adorning his body; he’s checked his gear – the next agent coming around the corner, they got a buddy-system going, clever, just bad for him, suffers a blow to his jugular on a pressure point that knocks the man out cold despite the fact that it’s a damn lucky shot.

As he steps over him – he’s got all the fancy toys off him, don’t take him for a green-eared hill-billy – Clint has to furtively admit that he might have had a hard time taking the ass out.

He does, however, step into a hornets nest full of HYDRA-agents and SHIELD-hostages.  
This looks bad.

 

\--

 

They make it because they’re stubborn – Clint stands by this. Rollins dislocated his shoulder in a brawl, he can’t quite feel his feet and he’s relatively certain he’s jacked up his knee _again_. But his hearing hasn’t gotten any worse so that’s that. Right?

Can’t be worse than gone after all.

Murdock hangs off him like a limpet once SHIELD drops them off back in NY but he imagines that he doesn’t look much better – his knee is killing him and his vision sucks what with the pounding in his head. It’s bad if the blind one of a pair has to guide the other around fucking street lanterns. But Matt is a good guy, so they manage.

When they arrive at his front door, the figure that stands in the doorway has got to be Darcy, but Clint needs a double-take, squeezes his eyes and forces them to refocus because he doesn’t think that a person has ever looked so much like _home_ before.

She is dressed in one of his Jumpers, ratty and riddled with holes, but it fits over her curves, loops gently around her neck and falls a little way over her hips; she hasn’t been wearing it when he’d left, but the black skinny-jeans – just as ratty, just as holey – and the black combat boots had been there. He doesn’t know how she manages to look so damn rosy-cheeked and wavy-haired when her eyes let him know that she’s just pulled an all-nighter and her fingers are twitchy as if she’s either trying _not_ to reach for the gun in the kangaroo-pocket of his hoodie or suffering from too much coffee all through the night.

But the sun illuminates her pale skin and paints her lips full and redder than they would have any right to be; she doesn’t wear mascara but behind her glasses her baby-blues look like big, round orbs of polished steel as she takes up the room of the doorway, barring it for intruders, welcoming them home with a critical look, but a small smile tugging at her pouty lips.

He wonders if this is what Thor had meant that his mother had always managed to be a Welcoming Bastion of Home – definitely Point Break’s words.

 

\--

 

They’re all safe; safe as they can be.

Matt is huddled with his people, two blonds and a mother with her son – nurse judged by the scrubs – allowing them as much calm before their return to the ‘regular life’ as possible. Clint thinks that they are well kept up here, with Darcy and the sturdy rocks that turn out to be his residents.

Deke and Tito are handing out breakfast, Grills is piling blankets on pretty much everyone and Lucky is being the four-legged furry support that everyone needs apparently. Aimee has been making runs for coffee and cocoa at odd intervals and he hasn’t been aware, but apparently the tenants in his house are _his people_ now just as much as they are Darcy’s.

Darcy who is pulling Simone into a hug that the older woman literally sinks into, abandoning both their coffees. He wonders if his people know that Darcy might just have saved them last night; he wonders if she sees it that way.

 

\--

 

 

Clint and Barney… had always had a difficult relationship. Aside from the fact that their father was an abusive son of a bitch and their livelihood in the circus was earned by stealing shit they’d grown up hitting each other in order to grow stronger, become better at _hurting_.

Barney could hurt a lot.

When it turned out that his brother had had an apartment, Clint had bought the house; when it turned out that Barney had bought the apartment to leech on a mother with two kids, Clint had decided to stay and right the wrong.

He’s not surprised that, given recent events, Simone is uncertain about her own willingness to stay. He’s also not surprised that it’s Darcy who comes to him with the topic.

_She’s scared for her boys._

And, really, Simone had every reason to be. Not only that Bed-Stuy could be a bad place in and of itself, but Clint’s building seemed to be attracting trouble by way of Clint himself – he can’t fault a mother who truly loves her sons for wanting a better life for them.

 _Been trying to think of a way to propose it to her respectfully –_ he admits to Darcy when he finally manages to get some words into her small tirade; god damn it but the woman is more fluent in ASL than he is. It’s almost embarrassing.

Lucky is giving them a tennis-commentator-look, head swinging from one person to the other and back again as they hash out what is going to be Simone’s great break. Now Clint has known, to some extent, about Darcy’s proclivity for the technological – it has been a red flag in her dossier after all – he’s just never really seen her in action until the day of SHIELD’s fall.

Even then he’d only gotten a glimpse of it.

Now though he has a front row seat to her capabilities and, seeing is believing isn’t it? He wants to know how it came that she has such quick fingers and such a clever mind. He wants to know how it came that she wasn’t allowed to study IT – because he knows of a few minds who would have been delighted by a seven-year-old capable of her coding skills.

He doesn’t ask.  
And he should be given a medal for it – just saying.

 

\--

 

What he does do – and what he doesn’t, in the slightest, feel guilty for – is knock back a few beers on the rooftop the day that Simone and her boys leave via plane to a destination he’s been allowed to retain because it’s not going to be their last stop. Not even Darcy knows where they’re going to end up; that has been all Simone. Even though Clint bought her a house there. Wherever it is.

He hopes she has more luck than here.

And when Darcy joins him on the rooftop, Lucky taking his place between them as he has, for some reason, so grown accustomed to do, and warming both their legs as she takes a calculating look at the amount of empty bottles next to him and starts catching up and soon matching him for every bottle.

He hopes Darcy is happy.


	8. Six

Clint needs to leave. It’s not so much wanting as needing to because if he is entirely honest, leaving now feels like running away from both his duties as a… well Not-Avenger as well as landlord.

He doesn’t know about the rest of NY, but his tenants are shaken despite their strong fronts – he can see them starting to doubt their security; and who wouldn’t. He cannot fault them in this. And usually as a good landlord – or so he believes – shouldn’t it be his duty to make certain that they have a save place to retreat to? Should it not be up to him to help create a place that they can come back to and feel at least moderately safe in; barring cosmic events?

And yet… here he is: packing.

Or rather angrily throwing clothes and possessions he deems quintessential into a backpack he knows nobody would steal from him – it looks ratty and old and threadbare, but it’s a SHIELD design and hasn’t yet been taken from him.

He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to leave his tenants or his house or Lucky, and most important of all he doesn’t want to leave Darcy.

Clint stops in his rampaging act of packing and takes a deep breath through his nose – tries to remain calm, collected.

Darcy, and he doesn’t doubt this for one moment, would fill the position he’d vacate as an intermediary landlord; she’d deal with the yolk-heads and the cephalopods and she would do a great job about it too. No doubt she’d have the fuzz over at her place a hell lot often than he does – and boy they know his name by now – and her relationship with Peyton would, undoubtedly, sour.

Matter of fact, he thinks all of her would sour.   
It would start with condemning him for his bullshit running act and then condemning the house she lived in and then condemning the police that really couldn’t care less about yet another concerned landlord in Bed-Stuy and so forth and so on.

He sits down, slouches, groans as he falls backwards onto the lumpy couch that has served him as a bed more often than he’s used his mattress proper. His arm folds over his eyes and shuts him off from the world. Clint can’t see the sun around him and he can’t hear the steps through the open door; all he wants is a nap and maybe everything’s better afterwards.

Only, when he pulls the arm off his head, there is Darcy, pale, beautiful and eerily quiet, standing in the doorway of his apartment, hand raised to knock.

Well, shit.   
Because this day hasn’t started off bad at all.

 

\--

 

He can’t tell her that basically all of his covers are blown; that an unknown entity has managed to piggy-back JARVIS with increasingly difficult encryption packages and hide away data and intel of which they, now, know neither origin nor hideout. Stark has let them now that he is, now, at the very least in the possession of someone’s iTunes Top 100 but the pun has not managed to alleviate the situation any.

JARVIS is a computer program.  
Clint doesn’t know what asshole managed to piggy-back, evade and trick him but given that Nat, Steve and their new third – he goes by Sam, Clint is already a little sorry for him – all corroborated that Zola managed to turn himself into a computer virus tailored for SHIELD it would not be surprising to find that HYDRA was now in possession of this information.

To be perfectly honest, he’s still a little whip-lashed from the fact that HYDRA even still exists. Talk about ‘extinguished with the Second World War’ – apparently, too, they are the new keepers of The Winter Soldier; the very man who’d taken over a grand portion of Nat’s training and turned out to be none other than a chryo’d Bucky Barnes.

This information, granted, Clint should not have.   
Nat has been kind enough to forward it to him after he’d sat her down for a quick decomp-session the likes of which they’d had when he’d first brought her aboard the SHIELD-train. It hurts to see his protege-turned-closest-confidante shaken like this; after years of experiencing just how unshaken she remained in near-to all other situations.

Finding out that the man who’d trained her and – he only learned this three days ago – aided Natasha in fleeing from the KGB was (a) still alive and (b) Steve’s bestest buddy, still alive and kicking from back in the fucking days and that (c) _naturally_ the blond wanted to go after him and Nat would _of fucking course_ help twisted her up pretty badly. No matter how cool and composed she was in the face of the first and last debriefing of the Avengers as they had heretofore been known.

Steve doesn’t know who to trust.   
Nat can’t say no to the man who has been her idol even before Clint met her.   
Thor is still fucking off earth.   
Stark has been pulled for a loop with someone able to trump his Jarvis-shaped-Ace.   
Banner doesn’t know if he’s safe from the military, doesn’t know if his family is safe.

They’re in for one bad trip.   
And all their fucking covers are blown and in the hands of HYDRA who has agents Fuck Knows Where.

So no.   
Clint can’t – isn’t allowed to – tell her.

Never mind how much it would facilitate his situation to have Darcy’s ears and help for this because he sure as hell doesn’t feel up to running with the wolves.

Fuck.   
FUCK!

 

\--

 

_You’re leaving_

She doesn’t adorn the statement with a questioning look, avoids his eyes at all costs and instead keeps them stubbornly on the area around his torso where his hands have dropped and where she can see his backpack in the periphery of her futzed up vision. He’s learned that she’s far-sighted as fuck, enough that she might make a good sharp-shooter in fact, but has always been mistaken for short-sighted.

Clint can’t answer.   
Doesn’t know how to.

The air in the room feels heavy, feels like it’s pressing down on his chest, disabling him from properly inhaling a sufficient amount of oxygen to properly function. He swallows; tries to catch her eyes – Darcy doesn’t fall for it and for a few painful breaths, she quiets her body and stills her hands until her eyes find his and he fights to not rear backwards.

Ice blazes at him, anger jumps from blue to blue and she doesn’t even need to touch him to deliver the slap that resounds in his head.

She doesn’t stomp; she doesn’t yell. Darcy doesn’t even say another word as she turns on her heels and exits his apartment – she slams the door though; he can feel that before he sinks back into the sucky cushioning of his couch.

Awww, fuck.

 

\--

 

That night finds Clint on the top of his roof; not just the roof itself, but the very toppity-top he could find (the equally flat surface of the entrance from the stairs) glaring at the never-sleeping city around him. In that moment he hates it.

He hates not being able to hear it.   
He hates it for never fucking sleeping.   
He hates the rising crime-rate.  
He hates it for not taking care of the people that live there properly.   
He hates it. Oh my god does he hate it.

In Iowa – and that place was hell, not lying – at least you could see the stars from the rooftops, you could catch frogs that were not in some sort sick or diseased, you could go running around the fields that would swallow you hole in summer.

God he hates that place.  
Not that this one is any better.

Clint groans; feels the sound reverberate in his chest as he plops back and stares into the velvet-black void of sky above him, stars too weak to compete with the electrical light around him, no matter how desperate he keeps looking for a point to focus on.

It swallows him and when it spits him out the sun is rising in the East.

 

\--

 

When he comes down from the roof, Lucky is occupying his door-mat, giving him the biggest most gullible eyes known to man-kind and despite the fact that the new morning has brought new resolutions with it, even if it hadn’t the sight of his best furry friend alone would have stalled him long enough to come to his senses.

As it is, he already has and when he bends his knees to scratch the Lab’s head, what he gets is an armful of warm, furry, happy animal pinning him down – what he gets is a hug and a content being in his arms and, for now, Clint thinks that this is all he is ever going to need.

He can’t go to Darcy.  
He might not ever be able to let her get too close to him while the Squid-Heads are still out there and hunting for him, but he can stay – he needs to.

Hawkeye hasn’t been out there for nearly a year now – it’s almost shocking how long he has gone without any of his buddies – and the purchase of the house has, Stark has related this to him, vanished from existence entirely. The AI had acquiesced that he’d watched its demise so… so Bed-Stuy – and this is funny because _hello, irony –_ is currently the safest place to be.

No body knows of it.

So Clint will stay.  
And he’s going to ignore these ridiculous stirrings of affection for the woman who is holding together his house and soul.

...He’s going to need a new hobby.

 

###

 

The situation was to be expected.

He is not saying that the brothers of SHIELD meant to invite ire with their goals to secure the peace of Midgard, but Thor himself has recently learned that the enemy that conducts the killing strike is not one that you see coming – it is one in your own ranks.

The Man of Fury and the Shieldmaiden Hill had held much contempt for him when he’d inquired about the trustworthiness of SHIELD warriors – The Man of Fury has quite succinctly let him know that all assembled warriors had been tested thoroughly and were trustworthy to the utmost.

It seems that even he has been caught off his guard.

And while his Lady Jane has been brought to safety by the very same brothers who have found themselves betrayed… it is time to return.

The Norns have sent him a dream and his presence on Midgard is no longer a hindrance to the developments there, his Lady might have need of him and while the _afl-hirða_ Darcy might not need him as such – and he is not to intervene in her learnings either, on penalty of death – his presence on Midgard might ease the second part of her endeavor necessary for her _Rísa_. And on this will depend the well-being and balance of the universe.

Thus, Thor has no intentions of intervening.   
He does not feel like starting Ragnarok. That is not up to him.

 

###

 

One of her Curious Georges brings her attention to the young girl running with them – Darcy admits that given her current mental state she might not have noticed her soon enough, but one of her regulars hands over his slice of Pizza to what appears like an unrelated bystander. The girl is maybe a few years younger than Darcy herself, nineteen or twenty even, if she’s that lucky and at her side even Lucky gives a small whine as if his attention had been equally riveted by one of her literal followers almost forcing the hot slice of cheesy goodness on the beat-up black-haired woman.

It is only when, even then, the other one insists on sharing the piece that Darcy makes a note to keep an eye on her. She might be feeling like shit currently, but that was no reason to not make certain that those around her were well.

Wasn’t that part of her duties as _afl-hirða_? Was she not meant to make comfortable those around her and give them a Hearth – a Home – to return to and feel safe at? Where had she failed with Clint? Why was he leaving?

Certainly it could be that now that SHIELD had had some kind of drawback that they’d need him again but… he’d say something at least, right? He wouldn’t just go; he can’t. He has tenants to look after, to think about, he has a whole house that won’t just manage itself and what about…

She stops at a corner and blinks herself into existence, realizing that her younger Curious Georges are stopping to give her confused looks. Lucky, at her side, gives her one too, soft, wet nose snuffing at a limp hand and Darcy busies herself with petting him as she collects her thoughts and shakes them off.

So what about her.   
Clint has no ties to her; she’s not like Simone who was waylaid by Clint’s bastard brother and she’s not like Aimee who had had a bad hand with men before she discovered that she liked women so much better (and a much better hand with them too). She’s not like Grills either, who still talks about the time when Clint helped him move his father’s stuff and saved the two of them from a New Jersey Flood. She’s not like Deke or Tito who have some kind of manly-pride-relation-club with Clint where they’re all involved but no one talks about it.

Darcy is just Darcy.   
She’s the weird kid who shoots at people crashing through doors and who bandages stupid idiots who don’t know when to quit jumping from flarking roofs. She’s the stranger who bunked in the basement until Clint took her in and gave her an apartment proper. She’s the tenant who has the dog whom Clint loves.

But it goes no further does it?

Looking at it cold, hard and factually – it doesn’t extend to anything else.   
So there is really no reason to think higher of herself than necessary.

Considering she’s the woman who can’t even hold a boss for more than a year.

Still… it is now her duty, the only one she has left, to make certain that those who feel a link to her be safe and cared for; that they have a place to warm their fingers and souls at. And who knows; she’s saved up a little – she might be able to keep her place long enough to find a new job.

...Who knows.

 

\--

 

Clint… doesn’t leave.

While Darcy can’t put into words how very relieved she is to see that the blond archer has decided to stay put where he is and take care of his house and tenants instead of running away from whatever it is that has had him packing, she, too, notices the distance he keeps putting between them.

It is a subtle and silent distance; a look for a greeting instead of a wave and a question; a nod to indicate agreement instead of a discussion about the necessity of something; turning to others for help instead of turning to her; going out alone instead of asking if he could take Lucky with him.

And she gets that. She does. They both have their own lives, don’t they? He’s an Avenger and she’s just… she’s just the person who hasn’t been able to reach her boss for seven days in a row now and who doesn’t know if opening up the diner as she does every day is even legal any longer.

Even talking to Lance about the maybe-disappearance of her boss hasn’t born much fruit. It’s not unheard of, he’s let her know, that people aren’t there any longer after a bigger scaled event such as the latest one – no matter if it has been in DC. And Darcy… well… she could take over the Diner couldn’t she? Legally it might even be possible… if Han was indeed… gone.

So now, again, Darcy needs to sit down and just think for a little while. Because would she, indeed, want to have a Diner? Is it something she can see herself doing? What would it cost? Would she keep the cook? What would she sell? Would she change anything?

There’s just… so many questions at the moment and Darcy doesn’t feel like she has the time to answer them all correctly so what she does – and she does this with perfected ease – is brew herself the strongest coffee known to man-kind (and _Aesir_ -kind; Thor has had much to say and laud about her _Morning Brew_ ) unpack the small telescope that Jane had bought her for her birthday last year and settle down on top of the roof.

She won’t, probably, see much because light-pollution is a thing and stars are bloody finicky when they want to be, but as eleven o’clock rolls around and half of the lights around the city go out in order to save electricity, she can find one bright little bugger after another.

Spring is slowly stretching its limbs, reaching for the weather and the skies and she can find Beetle-guise on the firmament, the brightest star in the constellation of Orion and she sits, straining her eyes to find the rest of it before it occurs to her that she is looking at one of the mightiest archers in Greek history – immortalized in the stars and promptly leans away from the lens, blinking angrily at the black spots in her vision.

Damn it.

 

\--

 

She’s closing up the Diner for good when the young woman enters her line of vision again, edges of her mouth turned down and her shoulders hunched up to her ears, hands pulled into the sleeves of her sweater – Darcy can see this even as she turns the keys for the last time and gives the door a parting pat to the frame. Tomorrow she is going to have to turn in the keys to some same bureaucrat but at least she is going to receive her pay either way. Coupled with her savings, she’s going to be safe for at least four more months.

That is, until the young girl approaches her.

“Hi.”

Darcy has been the one to talk first, but they’re opposite of each other and the girl – woman, really, it’s more evident close up, young though she may be – is giving her a wide, brown-eyed stare.

“Hi.” --she finally replies. “My name is Kate. I’ve been told to… come to you.”

Probably by her Curious Georges; the young woman gives off a polished air, despite her grungy clothes and her dirty skin, her speech is what street folk would describe as ‘proper’, doesn’t quite belong to Williamsburg… or any place close. Darcy smiles, offers her hand.

“My name is Darcy.” --they don’t quite shake, instead of squeeze hands and Darcy gets the feeling that they are somehow testing each other out with this subtle motion. “I’ve been told I’m good at helping. How do you feel about a shower and some grub?”

Lucky has finished his business on the corner behind her and as he reaches her side, bumping her hand with his wet nose in greeting, he steps out and towards the woman Kate. She is careful when she lowers herself, allowing him to put his nose to her neck, her hands and her knees before he seems content and takes a seat next to Darcy again. Kate, from her crouched position, gives her a crooked smile and with open hands asks: “Have I passed muster?”

And Darcy supposes that she has.

“Step into my parlor.”-- _said the spider to the fly_ ; and the deal is sealed when Kate does indeed quirk a smile at the implication.

 

\--

 

Kate isn’t just _a_ Kate; Kate is _the Kate Bishop_ . Daughter of the business Mogul Bishop who lost his wife some years ago and has never been rumored to have progeny – Kate lets her know that it has been her mother’s wish and the only thing that her father could hold himself to after he discovered various recreational _medicines_ to ease his troubled mind. And while Kate would have had all the freedom to get away with stuff that ‘regular Joes’ would not have, she chose not to – which, for an eighteen year old, proves a lot of discipline and forethought.

Darcy’s not certain she’d have acted the same way back when she was eighteen.   
Hell, give her a _carte blanche_ now and she’ll hack whatever server she’ll have to and go back to university in no damn time.

...Which… granted, isn’t exactly _deviant_ either (excepting talks of social deviance, because that’s a whole other business, ‘kay?)

Instead Kate Bishop, prized archer throughout the country, decided she wanted to join the Circus; or better yet: buy one and re-model it to her liking.

And while one would think that this wouldn’t be all that bad a venue to choose – stocks related to free-time activities are at an all time high in their current economical state as it is – it has been enough of a reason, apparently, to disown Kate Bishop. Now known as Katie-Too in the back-alleys of Williamsburg. She’s a dab shot and archer too and once ensconced in Darcy’s shower cubicle the older woman decides that she needs to get her head checked… or her Aura; whichever it is that keeps attracting those damn _archers_ into her life.

 

\--

 

The thing about Katie-Too is that she actually fits in splendidly with Darcy.

She sleeps on the couch, cuddled up with Lucky under a blue fleece throw that she has been keeping close ever since she’d first found it in some Salvation Army Shop and then under a real blanket that Darcy can’t stop herself from buying, because spring might be around the corner and summer won’t be too far either, but a blanket is still… it’s different from a fleece throw.

Even Kate admits this.

And because Clint has his hands full with whatever he is currently making of his life, he doesn’t have the time to spy on Darcy and judge her for taking in a stranger – and another stray… and archer – that is quickly becoming a good friend of Darcy’s keeping her up to date on her Curious Georges with small evening reports. Apparently the barrier talking to Katie-Too is lower than talking to Darcy herself; she can understand it to some extent – and helping her find a small job in a bar not too far away.

Not that it’s anything _big_ ; but the proprietor seems nice, straight and upstanding and he doesn’t take shit in his four walls either – which is a huge plus – Darcy knows, after the first night, that she is never going to have to worry about wandering hands in here.

Luke rules with an Iron Fist. It’s his bar and to hell with anyone who will not adhere to the House Rules – she’s watched him; he’s intimidating due to his sheer body mass alone and it’s enough to see him haul two grown men through the entry-way without so much as breaking into a _bead_ of sweat to know that not crossing him is the better choice.

It definitely makes for a good work-atmosphere though and when Katie-Too comes to fetch her every evening, accompanying her back to the apartment-building in Bed-Stuy, the big man doesn’t even bat a single eye. So Darcy farewells him until the next day and counts her blessings.

Katie-Too doesn’t just help her find a new job and feed her Curious Georges on time nevertheless; there’s something about the young woman that wants… coddling. Some kind of paying attention to on an emotional level that Darcy is all too happy to provide: slinging her arms around the other as they walk home, lending clothing that she knows won’t fit her any longer but will do splendidly on Kate (and way better than the ratty clothing of which, it turns out, she only has two changes of), she introduces her to Aimee and her girlfriend, she takes her up on the roof at night to go looking for stars (finding Orion still hurts a little, but a little less when Kate proves to be a fountain of knowledge and recites her the whole story of the great hunter and his deal with the Pleiades from the top of her head).

Darcy and Kate fall into each other like long lost sisters and if it is the afl-hirða in her that makes it so easy for the younger woman to trust and open up to her, or simply her own charm, is irrelevant in the face of garnering a friend of the magnitude that once only Jane had been able to access.

It feels like flying.

 


	9. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It gets good and then it gets hella weird

"What are you doing here?"

He’s tired when he finds her on the stairwell to the roof, and doesn’t immediately see that she is protecting what – a second later as his eyes refocus in annoyance – turns out to be Darcy’s late night picnic gear. Clint has seen it in action often enough to know it by heart now; she broke it in with him gorram it.

The girl’s eyes widen almost comically and he thinks that a vicious part of him thinks that he should be pleased he still has this kind of thrall over a _kid_ that could have out-shot him on her better days, given he was having one of his worse ones,  but they are fixed on something _behind_ him and Clint turns on his heels, glares at the  poor sod that has brought the pretender up to his roof, into his house; _glares_ to find-

Darcy.

“ _What is going on here?”_

 

\--

 

Finding James Barnes is hell on his sleep-cycle, hell on his last fucking damn nerve and hell on all sides – he feels like a Spiky Rubik’s Cube  trying to fit into a soap-bubble.  It’s bloody well exhausting  and the return of Phil I Fucking Mourned You Coulson  in Fury’s ‘old’ position is not doing his head any favors. 

N either is Bobbi’s presence but that’s just the barbed-wire-side-dish to the grenade-main-course. 

May is turning her head, opening her mouth to whisper something at _Director_ Coulson where he’s situated at the head of the table that Clint has been _shackled to_ and before even the first word has passed her lips, Clint’s snarling mouth has opened and he can feel his chest vibrate with the anger in his voice: “You say something, Agent May, you say it so that all can conceive it or so help me fucking Thor I will blast this stupid bus from the sky and good riddance.” --because Coulson should know that he could be out of these things in under two seconds flat and out of this room in under a minute if he wanted to (and if he left no one alive).

The Director has the decency to look contrite.   
The Cavalry – a nd damn it he pulled her out of that fucking OP –  gives him a stink eye that would have chased Loki from his gourd. 

_Do you even know what you were about to do?_

Yes… Yes he does.   
And he’s not fucking proud of it.

“Contrary to what you may think of me, Agent, it is not my habit to waltz into a situation unprepared.”--and that was pretty much the lowest blow he could deal, and equally his trump card – should she recover sooner from his assault than anticipated he is going to have to wing it. 

H owever, he’s always been kind of good at that. So he turns to Coulson.  
And lets loose. 

When Nat and The Falcon  kind-of-not-really  bail him out in a spectacular maneuver that leaves him falling through air with no parachute on and no airborne friendlies close to him any time soon,  he swears that this is going to be the last time.  He swears that SHIELD is going to have to be over and done with him – all sides of SHIELD; whatever SHIELD still existed. 

Clint Barton  is going to drop the bloody bow – he  tells himself, closing his eyes against the sight of the airbus turning into a black, un - distinguishable spot above him –  and his flarking arrows and he  is going to return to his futzing house in Bed-Stuy, ask Darcy Lewis to be his whatever he could do best and live in secrecy under the very noses of the people that  leave him falling. 

A -fucking-gain. 

_It’s barely a scratch_ – Nat mumbles to him when they’re somewhat safely ensconced in a  conductible Safety Pod and en route to wherever the intel has told the three neck-breakers to go. 

Clint only tells her to drop him in New York and not contact him again for the foreseeable future. He doesn’t answer that one look she has never before given him; that one look he knows he will never be able to forget if he turns his head towards her.

...That one look  she’s only ever sent  opposing Agents she  can remember from her Training Program. 

 

- -

 

So he has wanted to apologize. Sue him.   
He’s thought he was going to be all smooth about it too – let her know what happened;  let her know how it happened; what he’s been needed to do; what he couldn’t do. 

For once, Clint has had it all figured out.

And now there is the one thing he’s always regretted and has never been able to  correct in his life – staring at him from his stairs  to the roof, giving him the biggest, most scared eyes ever and Darcy glaring at him with ice in her eyes that could have frozen Steve Rogers. 

He wants to call it.   
Today sucks.

 

\--

 

_Katie-Too_ stays.   
Because Darcy looks about ready to rain fire and ice on him and because Clint knows – holy Thor he knows so hard – that he has a lot to make up for on the Katherine Bishop Front and allowing her to crash with Darcy who, apparently, has something weird going on with Archers, is just the first step.

Well… second, actually… alright, _third_. There’s still two outstanding apologies after all; and they will have to be spectacular and honest and _everything_.

However, on the upside, it doesn’t suck as hard as he thought it would.   
Not only because now he has some kind of excuse to lurk around Darcy’s apartment a little more often, get to cuddle and spoil Lucky a little more often, but also because… well… Darcy.

Clint is not a daft man most of the time. It has, however, taken him a fall out of a besieged airbus, very recently, to admit that Darcy… there is something about Darcy that continually draws him in, gives him peace, gives him a center to orbit around that is neither SHIELD nor the Avengers; a gravitational middle that is more stable than any of those he’s had until now and he likes not just that.

There’s just… Darcy.   
_Beautiful Darcy_ who welcomes Kate with a small party on the roof and who draws his tenants back together when Clint himself has not been doing that much of a splendid job about it; _intelligent Darcy_ who has hidden them away in times of need; _strong Darcy_ who loses one job after another and instead of giving and up like many others would, dusts herself off and finds the next one with a wry smirk of naturalness on her face; _soft Darcy_ who can’t stop taking in strays that she all loves equally and that Clint, when Grills makes them take a group photo, suddenly realizes he’s a part of.

He may be the landlord of the house.   
But Darcy is the one who owns his tenants.   
Himself included.

And so Clint returns to taking Lucky out on the early morning runs that he has started to do again – if only to be able to keep up with the Chaotic Three on their hunt for an amnesiac POW, he lets Nat know that he’s up for grabs whenever they need him again and somehow… somehow whenever he reaches for his bow to do some practice, Kate is always there.

She’s better than she was when he’s last seen her and she was pretty good even then, but her posture has calmed down, evened out; there is no hectic in her motions any longer, no anxiety that she is _not_ going to make the shot. It’s something of a nice thing to see in a young archer and whenever he goes for trick-shots, it does not take the younger long to follow.

All in all, things around him calm down.   
They have their regular roof-top-grill-outs again now that spring has come in full swing and whenever Matt or his colleagues have the time, it’s nice to see them coming up too, decompressing on his roof like a small group of elite Black Ops just back from a mission. But then Clint supposes that Court is just another hidden trench of war so he makes certain that the disgusting swill Matt’s blond boyfriend calls beer is in stock and gives the Devil a few heads up if he notices any uptake in Gang Mobility around his usual block.

That, too, is something that Clint allows himself to take up again.

Between the short inter-missions – _har-de-har,_ _not funny Rogers_ – Clint pulls out his weapons and goes patrolling around his block again. He finds the Hobo Signs that the people Darcy calls her _Curious Georges_ leave behind and sometimes finds suspicious looking vans, and sometimes he gets to do a full drug bust.

It’s nice in a way.

If he’d manage to find the balls to actually talk to Darcy again it would be _perfect_.

 

\--

 

The day he’s forgiven, he thinks, is the day when he comes to consciously seek Kate out. He arrives quietly on the doorstep to the apartment that the two young women live in now performing a weird dance of cohabitation that they do well enough to trick a non-inaugurated bystander into thinking they’d been living together for years now instead of maybe scant weeks, with both of their bows and arrows and holds the smaller set out across the doorstep in an invitation that doesn’t take Kate long to follow up on.

Darcy gives him a cautious look over the dishes she is putting away, but the anger is gone from her eyes, replaced by the glint of something Clint cannot quite decipher but he remembers it from that first day she took care of yolk-heads trying to find leverage in his house. It’s gone again the next moment and when he turns around, heeding the younger archer to follow, he’s, again, not certain if maybe it hadn’t been the light.

He takes the day to teach Kate how to shoot while hanging upside down; he’s quiet about his instructions, careful and all-in-all a lot softer on her than his own teachers were on him and she has enough raw talent and enough wiliness to persevere when she doesn’t immediately make the shot that Darcy has to stop them almost forcefully in order to get them to eat, drink and rest a little in the middle of the day and carefully heed them to end as evening falls.

Clint has almost not noticed time going by this quickly, and before he leaves for his usual rounds around the block and his part of the district, he gives Kate a questioning look that she answers with a decisive nod.

Tomorrow again.

 

\--

 

Darcy finds him the evening as he tries to, unsuccessfully, stick a large band-aid over a larger scratch under his shoulder; the movement pulls the minor wound unnecessarily and the ensuing pain does not allow him to properly reach it which is why she finds him cursing up a blue storm over three bottles of beer at his feet and the band-aid partially opened in his right hand.

The lights flicker around him and announce her presence in a way she’s come to introduce around him after he has surprised her several times in her abode – because Darcy is a clever thing and she’s not going to even try to surprise a trained SHIELD Agent in a moment when he would feel comfortable and very jarred if, suddenly, there was another individual in their near vicinity.

He turns to find her closing the door behind her with a pensive look on her face and hesitant steps; but his swearing subsides.

_I’d never presume such a thing but could you maybe need some help?_

Clint swallows; wonders why his mouth seems so dry all of a sudden and if Darcy has been wearing the blouse earlier on, too – if maybe he simply hadn’t noticed over the Cardigan she was prone to wearing around the house or if maybe it was work-specific clothing.  He  sincerely  hopes it’s the former  as he nods, allowing her to step closer. 

“I just can’t properly reach it.”--he mumbles quietly, breathing deep to feel his own voice reverberate with his diaphragm and thereby gauging the volume of the sound. 

H er lips are red and the flush on her otherwise pale cheeks should be as painted as the dark rim around her powder-blue eyes,  and she is  suddenly close enough for him to feel the warmth of her body on his naked skin;  the exhale of her breath as she steps around him to  inspect the wound raises goose-flesh  and suddenly he feels his heart in his throat. 

I t has not been like this a few weeks ago;  he’s certain. A few weeks ago his body had not been on a mutinous rise with Darcy Lewis this close to him. Of course he’s wanted to hold her, embrace her and protect her from what he possibly could – and there are a lot of things out there, especially now, to protect her from –  and he’s liked her in a gung-ho kind of way.  This carelessly beautiful woman who stood her own damn ground in whatever situation was thrown at her. 

But a few weeks ago, and he inhales sharply as the band-aid is laid over the disinfectant  running cooling rivulets down the skin of his back,  he has not seen her breathtaking competence in facing a SHIELD catastrophy; a few weeks ago he’s not been privy to IT-skills that would make Tony Stark happy to employ the slip of a woman; a few weeks ago he’s not seen her  _angry_ yet; a few weeks ago he hasn’t been privy to all the things that he is  _not_ when she’s not by his side. 

A nd he’s a selfish sucker; a bastard really in that regard. He wants, he craves the feeling of something so raw and powerful at his side despite the fact that he has no idea what to do with this strange sensation – the knowledge of her as a capable, competent, individual, hell-bent on protecting what she possibly can, should not change his view of her as an entity to  keep under wraps and  _away_ from his side where it could become dangerous. 

Her delicate wrist in front of his nose literally snaps him out of his stupor. 

He doesn’t know where he’s just been but Darcy is giving him a  thorough look; one that lets him know that she is aware of just how many pizza slices he’s had in the past few weeks without her proper taking care of. 

_I wasn’t aware you are this much of a human disaster._ \--she tells him in a quiet way, her motions are slow and consciously chosen and her body is careful in what it lets through. And Clint’s heart – the traitorous little fucker – jumps a beat  with the familiar words. 

_Pizza?--_ she asks and he could kiss her. He should probably, at one point, but maybe… maybe not now. 

_Pizza_ . 

 

###

 

Clint  is angry when he finds Kate  and yet Darcy is uniquely surprised to  realize with startling clarity : he’s not angry at Darcy; and neither is he angry at Kate.  Clint is a man very angry with himself  in a situation in which he is very fed up with the world.  So he lashes out when first he finds Katie-Too sitting on the stairs to the roof-top waiting for Darcy to fetch them some blankets and huddle in for a quiet night on top of Bed-Stuy. 

A ngry dialogues in sign language are a thing to behold, Kate tells her later, letting her know that she can understand why Lucky – once he arrived at the scene – gave the two of them  tennis-commentator-looks. 

“I wasn’t doing any better.”--the younger woman admits. “Like… I know ASL exists and stuff and I know people communicate in it but… well… knowing of it and seeing it are two different things and the fight?”

A pparently it looked as ridiculous as it had felt. 

Darcy has never before had a fight in Sign Language,  and Clint wasn’t as fluent as he  would  like to be which ensued in a lot less  capability during times of emotional upheaval.  Add to that he’s had two broken fingers and apparently no sleep the last week when he’s been Lord Knew Where –  _out_ , obviously –  and it found Darcy in a situation where she couldn’t respond to a question because she couldn’t follow the syntax of the sentence. 

H ell.   
Hell on all sides. 

On the up-side… “I didn’t know you knew Clint.”--she starts when  the two of them are enclosed in her apartment again; safe for now  and Kate… becomes eerily quiet, before she gives Darcy a look that lets her know that there better be Tequila tonight – if only to be present on the table because Darcy has made it very clear that she’s not about to hand out alcohol to under-aged-people. No matter if they’ve already had a taste while on the streets . 

“Clint Barton is kind of the reason I am where I am currently.” 

T here was Tequila  on the table .   
And a lot of Grape Juice.

 

- -

 

Clint sulks.  
Because it’s one of the things that the blond archer does extremely well, Darcy learns in the next week or so; he glares one-eyed through the narrow opening of a door, he gives a suspicious stink-eye around a corner and he generally acts so unlike the Clint Barton she’s come to know that it’s almost funny.

But just _almost_ because it’s still a little weird to be the cause of tension to this man; to the person who took her in when she had literally nothing. It’s not a good sensation. Despite the fact that Kate is going to stay and Darcy has actually, openly, fought Clint on this – especially now that she is privy to Kate’s Archer Biography, which is vastly different from the Usual Biography that any other innocent bystander would be told. And apparently Kate has had a bad run-in with the Avengers before… kind of; she’s agreed to, maybe, take Thor out of the entity known as The Avengers Initiative because he was not present at that particular time. What remains is a certain level of animosity-see-hesitancy on both sides coupled with a healthy dose of destroyed hero worship in Kate’s case.

It rankles a little that Clint has been such a douche in the Curious Case of the Kid’vengers, but Darcy supposes that she can see, at the very least, where the older Archer might have come from – she couldn’t, granted, say for certain, but the job did tend to become dangerous. Even though the kids, from what Kate told her, had been successful in most cases. It was not a game and Clint, of all people probably, knew best what it meant to have one’s childhood annulled due to premature growing-up.

Maybe it is because Clint himself knows that he hasn’t been quite fair to Kate that he starts coming around at the end of the week a little more with a little less hostility in his actions. He starts out soft, taking Lucky on a run that he apparently can need quite well, helping her with a few heavy purchases and greeting her openly on the stairs again.

When Kate asks to allow Darcy to bother Clint during one of his Training Sessions, she is… well… she is confused at first. Because Kate is a very independent kind of person and for her to ask Darcy’s permission is a little inconsistent with the image that the older woman has cultivated of her friend but--

“I don’t want to strain your relationship any more than I already did.”

\--it takes a little while to convince Kate that there has never been and probably never will be anything between Clint and her. It might be that Darcy herself needs a little convincing on that particular front too.

It gets better when Darcy has to start to feed the two Arrow-Nuts – it’s going to be her name for them; she’s dead-set on making it a thing – and force them to take a pause in what appears to have grown from simple co-practice to a full-blown training-session.

She wonders when she is going to have to ask Claire to help her stock up on her Med Kit and give her a crash course in… everything.

 

\--

 

Clint comes to her in the dead of the night, fully dressed in Hawkeye regalia and his compound bow already slung around his shoulder. He is very quiet on his feet and if it hadn’t been for the sliver of light he stepped into, interrupting her falling-asleep-ritual, it’s possible she would not even have noticed him.

_I’m going to be away for a few days._ \--he signs haltingly in the weak light, squatting on the very edge of her mattress – so carefully that it barely dips. His fingers are unused to the motions now that he’s grown used to reading lips and talking at an estimated adequate of volume and Darcy thinks that she should be signing with him a lot more, but her eyes are bleary, her head feels a little like cotton and her own hands won’t properly cooperate when she tries to mold them into words. 

_Going._ \--she manages; hopes that her face is confused enough to convey the question she means to ask. 

_Mission._ \--Clint replies and yes, that makes sense – even to her sleep-addled brain. SHIELD needs their agents now more than ever, if only to make good on the  shit that went down a few weeks ago. 

_Stay safe._

And she might be imagining it; but that could be a smile on his face.

 

\--

 

Darcy returns from an uneventful night at Luke’s when she finds Clint’s apartment door open and Lucky giving her an unhappy look from the doormat of her landlord – she finds herself trying to call the man before she realizes what a stupid idea that would be  and as she sticks her head through the door, she wonders if even her interference would be clever. 

If he’s really here then it’s likely he just returned from the mission and if that’s  the case then he was likely to need decompressing – Thor always  handled that by engaging Jane in various bouts of boisterous bed-sports that had Darcy generally fleeing the premises.  But she doesn’t know  _Clint_ in such moments and…

... and he’s a disastrous human who has not yet received the memo that back-wounds were a bitch to handle alone. 

D arcy flickers the lights witch ; gives him a steady once-over as he turns  and offers her help. Cautiously. Not because she’s afraid of Clint or because she doesn’t trust him but because maybe it’s not what he wants right now; maybe he feels a little too unsteady for it right now and maybe  his pupils are a little dilated when she steps close to him. 

H e smells nice though. 

About three days later she wonders if anything she’s told Kate about her non-relationship with Clint Barton has held any truth at all.

 

\--

 

“Oh God Flarking Darn It!”

Darcy is not even surprised. She’s just… Well, she feels like resigning from the world and is freely expressive of her opinion as she throws the towel on the ground, upon finding Luke Cage bent over a beat up Matthew Murdock in _Devil_ Regalia, on the very counter-top she has just _cleaned_. Damn it.

One of her Curious Georges is giving her a questioning glance from the other side of the street and she doesn’t even know how she can tell where he is exactly but all the shrouded figure needs is a decisive nod from her side and something like pressure builds between her eyes as she unlocks the door to the Bar and hustles towards the two men.

Darcy doesn’t doubt she’s going to have everything she needs in about a quarter hour. For now, Luke has to deal with her stink eye. She can _see_ the bullet holes in his shirt. God damn Metas always findin’ ‘er.

“You, Cage,”--she starts as she pushes him away from Matt and bends over the wayward gauze around his torso, “you could’a told me you’re a Strongman and _Devil_ damn it if he ain’t told the truth I’m-a undo the stitches we had done the last time ‘round.”

Matt is giving her a hesitant smile but it’s bloodied and worrying to be frank and she’s already pulling at the hidden straps that hold together the armor that is currently more hindering her work than anything else.

Good news is her old stitches held.   
Bad news is that whatever it was that caught him it was _not_ a bullet.

And she has absolutely no idea how to work it.   
Only that she has to. Oh boy does she ever have to.

“Breathe.”--she orders the man in red with a stern Texan voice she can barely even recognize on her tongue, “an’ if you even think ‘bout stopp’n’ I’m’a slap ya, ya hear me? Hela ain’t havin’ you yet; you’re mine Li’l Red, don’t you dare stop breath’n’.”

 

###

 

 

Kate doesn’t know what is happening.

But at least Barton, himself, looks as if he’s having an out-of-body experience. So there.

 

\--

 

Barton has practically heaved her up into his arm – it’s a little disconcerting that, at eighteen, she can still be carried around by a grown man as if she were a Chihuahua – thrown the Med Kit into her arms and hightailed from the joint they’re both currently somewhat calling home. She’s always thought that Bruce had patented the ‘Like A Bat Outta Hell’-Exit but apparently Hawkeye could do that just as well.

She doesn’t even know where they’re going because the old coot is taking the fucking high road and the flat-roofs without even a second thought to her, stashed away under one of his arms. But there’s a lull when she realizes he’s thinking about throwing her and catching her mid-air, she can see it in his movements and it’s in this hesitance that she suddenly recognizes the back-alley around Luke’s.

And suddenly everything comes into focus.

Because it can only be _Darcy_.

Kate is out of his grip before he can even try to argue, but she’s down the building as fast as he is and maybe they’re a little competitive because the very next instance they’re kind of fighting about who is going in first but fail spectacularly, falling through an unexpectedly open door.

Luke is giving them a wide-eyed look that she throws right back at him from her position on top of Barton – _take that_ _old coot, how’s the dirt taste, sucker_ – before her own eyes take in more than just his own position, but rather his surroundings.

Darcy is bent over what looks like the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and Clint is moving away from under her, kicking the door closed behind them and raising himself on his hands and knees, grasping for the Med Kit that she is already pressing into his hands because she might have a strong stomach but she’s not certain she can actually stand next to whatever bloodied mess Darcy is currently pressing her hand to.

Maybe it would have been better to call the Ambulance but she would not dare voice such a thing when Barton, at the very least, has every trust in her from what she can read in his stance.

“What do I do?”

Kate is surprised to hear him talk, voice so much smoother and calmer than she can remember ever having been, but Darcy’s head snaps up and something in her eyes – she has her back mostly turned towards Kate – must spook Barton, because he snaps back a step.

“ _Archer_.”

And that… that is and is _not_ Darcy’s voice.

 

###


	10. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a very long night to be had (there's a very long morning to follow)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this was posted later than my usuals :/ I like... forgot a little about it :( But it's here!!! And I hope that you will still enjoy it!

Luke has been hearing about the steady rise of Meta-Human beings around New York; lured by the presence of The Avengers into thinking that they might find some semblance of acceptance and he can't deny that it has been a reason for him to stay around rather than leave after... _after_.

He's found himself a niche he could work in, he's found himself a hole to crawl back into at the end of the day and that is all that he'd felt like he needed.

Enter one Darcy Lewis.

Now don't get him wrong, he has enough female trouble – more than a man can really need – and while he has been looking for a bar-aide, he has not exactly been thinking about that support in terms of 'of the other sex'. But the young woman comes with good recommendations.

"You will want to take her."--Katie-Too lets him know when he closes up shop. Literally the last chair is in his hands, turned around and put on the table, when she melds out of the shadows as he's gotten used to her from his days and nights on the streets. She's lucky she doesn't show up on the Troublesome Women List. Kind of too young for that.

“Because you say so, Little Bishop?”

But the slip of a girl has never been one to easily fall for bait; she’s emotional sometimes – yes – but more in the sense that she finds herself a cause and fully dives into it, loses herself in it. He’s been one such cause once; he’s never understood how it came that she stayed on the streets when she managed to help him off them. So she just shakes her head and almost clucks at him in a way that should make him mad, maybe, he doesn’t like being looked down upon by white folk; he’s had that all of his life.

Kate Bishop is like… a sister though. She gets away with bull-crap a lot of people don’t.

“Because she needs the job to feed us little critters.”--the girl replies with a soft smirk on her face. “You remember the pizza left behind only for us?”--she sing-songs and she does it in a cadence that shouldn’t befit her, it’s Harlem Street and she does not, usually, have the countenance for it. But this is her Street-Smart-Self and that side wears Harlem like a well-loved coat.

“How could I forget Paco’s Pizza Cart and their hot as fudge cheese. Filled our bellies on the coldest nights.”--it did. Luke doesn’t know where it came from but the other people fell over the food like the offering it was and didn’t look back. When it turned out that it was clean, Luke, too, filled up.

“Well, the girl who buys it needs the cash to do so.”--and Katie-Too, the sneaky little devil points at the door through which Darcy Lewis, her application is still in his kitchen, has passed through just five minutes ago.

And so Darcy Lewis comes to work for him.

 

\--

 

She is Texan and, having grown up in the South, he has never been too certain about that famed Southern Hospitality once he's realized at a relatively young age that it extended only to a certain percentage of people with certain characteristics. And Darcy Lewis… well, if she hadn’t had Katie-Too’s vouch of trust she wouldn’t have set foot in his bar often, he’d have made certain of that.

But he can read.  
And he reads best between the lines, where the words leave out, which is – incidentally – where Katie-Too finds the most sentences to speak and because he doesn’t doubt his little sister he takes what he would call a calculated risk.

And promptly pushes Good Old Fashioned Sasparillas into her direction when Darcy Lewis’ hospitality fills his Bar and his pockets.

“She is good.”--he praises the young Texan as he takes a rest next to Katie-Too, relishing in the obnoxious sound of her slurping. He’s happy that she actually allows herself inside his Bar more often than not; appreciates her getting her weight back to her bones.

“Told ya you’ll wanna take ‘er.”--he snorts and shoots her an incredulous look.

“Stop the Harlem, little Bishop. An’ help me do the taxes.”

Because Katie-Too has done her daddy’s taxes and he’s going to take advantage of it until he can pay her legally for it and write her proper recommendation letters. Until then he’s going to have to have learned how to do them and Darcy Lewis is playing him free for about two hours of work until the going gets tough.

 

\--

 

He’s never been _comfortable_ about being what he is; honestly as a black man one has enough trouble being a mere human, but a Strong-Man Meta-Human at that? He understands why people do not know, most of the time, what to think about a Human whose genetic make-up makes them more than merely homo sapiens – he understands the suspiciousness because hell, he himself is suspicious about his own abilities.

Maybe, though, it’s because of how he came by them. About the rape it implied; the hate that brought it about; the blatant disregard for every human right he had once possessed and could now no longer hope to call on to because, technically, he was no longer human.

And long before he’s known Pop, long before his own personal Harlem Shake went down, he met Katherine Bishop – tender seventeen years old, freezing her bony ass off on the corner across the street from his bridge; his abode that people didn’t bother to come close to.

Because trust him, he was volatile.

“You’re an idiot.”--she told him when he tried to curse her away, threaten with physical abuse she wouldn’t even be able to properly call in. “What is keeping you safe is keeping me safe.”

So they started out by calling each other Flea Bag and Leech and it was the start of something he has not regretted one bit. Not because Katie-Too helped him out of his hole; she was in too deep herself; can’t get there from there. But because Luke found, in her, a reason to not be what everyone else thought he should be. And became a sort of brother to a young woman with too big a mouth and too posh an accent.

This is how he levered himself out of his own hole; with a lot of help from Pop and a few well-placed grafiti signs at the purple hands of a slip of a Bishop. He owes her in a way that he owes Pop – because their lips are sealed and their hearts are big and accepting.

But no, he’s never been comfortable about being what he is; and hasn’t, before, been comfortable being who he was. And even after his rise in his part of town… even now that his name bears the weight that, in some sorts, Pop’s did before, he’s not comfortable using his weight to throw it around.

So when talk comes around of the Devil or when Jessica leaves his corner or when some lunatic in a yellow bandana is sighted he doesn’t go looking.

He keeps his head down.  
And tries to not listen to the voice in his head that sounds like Pop, telling him to go forward, telling him – yelling at him – that this is his opportunity, his time. He keeps his head down and over his counter.

And doesn’t think about Jessica and her sleek black hair running through his fingers. Or her sturdy, indestructible skin and…  
He’s not thinking about her.

 

\--

 

“Oh God Flarking Darn It!”

He’s never once heard Darcy swear; not out loud anyway and he’s a little surprised that she manages to keep her composure even now – in the face of him being bent over a person he’s sworn to himself to keep away from. She throws her towel, literally and, yes, he realizes she’s just swiped down the counters but this is life or death.

Probably. He’s not a nurse.

_Oh, nurse… yes, Claire!_

He doesn’t notice what it is that Darcy is doing, but he’s still trying to stop the bleeding chest wound from the man under his hands and is surprised when Darcy’s black, whispy hair appears in his field of vision, pulling his hands away.

_The life that is constantly slipping from between them… the blood that is constantly darkening them…_

“You, Cage,”--she starts as she pushes him away and bends over the man that has stilled so eerily sudden, “you could’a told me you’re a Strongman and _Devil_ damn it if he ain’t told the truth I’m-a undo the stitches we had done the last time ‘round.”

And the air sweeps from both of their lungs because Darcy Damn Lewis she knows the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and she’s done him up before. His head swims a little at this, because he does not know what he should think of that – he does not know what that could possibly mean and what it means for her employment in his Bar, but right now it means that the man might just survive; live to fight another day.

But there is something off about the woman, he thinks he’s somewhat gotten to know during the last months of working side-by-side with her, slipping into a rough Texan accent now that almost takes him back to Georgia, as he stumbles away from the counter and finds rest against a table that supports him. There is something off when her hands become frantic first, divesting the Devil with aptitude that has to come from a former run in, before the pale chest is bared – wound and all – and her hands fall very still around the puncture.

The reddish-yellow light of his neon signs lighting up the somber bar catch something in her eyes that makes them seem startingly silver despite the darkness she stands in and the hair on Luke’s neck raises as if catching a cold draft that he rationally knows is impossible, because the heating is up and isolation has always been paramount to him. It doesn’t compute until his tired brain realizes his eyes have been drifting, trying to find a reason for the breeze and he refocuses them on Darcy and the Devil, watching the shallow-breathing man slowly meld into a state of relaxation that is worrying, watching as the breeze – it has to be – that catches his neck also catches onto the tips of Darcy’s hair and twists the few strands in its hold, tugging them upwards.

It takes him several moments to catch up.

Moments in which Darcy’s Blue Eyes turn white under the fringes of her escaping hair.  
Moments in which the breathing of the man under her hands evens out with a soft choke.  
Moments in which the blood seems to turn black in the light.  
Moments in which the breeze that has tugged on her hair pulls it back and out of her face.  
Moments in which the air begins to hum.

Moments which are interrupted by the crude appearance of Katie-Too and a blond man that the slip of his sister buries under her as they fall through his Bar door; but even as the black-haired young woman gives a slightly satisfied smirk, the man is up in a flash, Med Kit in hand as he crosses the room in three large steps and asks without looking:

“What can I do?”

And Luke knows, he realizes the same time that the blond does that something has changed in Darcy, that something not-quite-her has taken over, her hands still pressing down on the puncture-wound in the chest of a probably rather dead Devil, because the familiarity with which the man has addressed her vanishes completely from his posture.

Luke has seen these things.  
He knows what it’s like to find a known face and not recognize a single thing about them and he knows… oh shit, he knows that Darcy Lewis might not have been purposefuly holding it back from him, but she’s not human.

 

###

 

“Archer.”--they recognize the man; even in this new vessel, even through these new eyes. They recognize the other in several functions – their _maðr_ , the one who gave them home and hearth to keep and not succumb to darkness, the one who holds power he knows not and under other circumstances this should be a joyous occasion.

For the Hearth Keeper has never before met The Archer and they have duties in their regard.  
Not that they know. Not that anyone but The Mother knows.

Currently, however, there is a soul to preserve from Hela’s clutches.

The Archer swallows, it’s visible with startling clarity that a part of them knows they should not possess – the contraptions on the bridge of their nose are called glasses and should serve the purpose of sharpening a rather deplorable sight – and it’s this other part that lets them know that The Archer goes by the name of Clint; and that they have noticed something is different.

They does not have the time for this now however; they can’t stay for long – they are still… their connection is still too weak; the anchor to the Mother is still fluctuating and their _helmingr_ might have called onto them, but it has been their experience that _helmingr_ do not often know what they are calling for when such a thing first occurs.

“Hold his.”

And The Archer Clinton opens their hands to hold onto the link they are pushing into his hands and it’s bright and visible to them; stable in his hands; secure but the Midgardian offers a confused gaze as they keep holding on to the link. At least there is that.

“Do not open your hands, Archer, or We are gone.”

And as they bend over The Devil again, they have a handsome face in this vessel, their _seiðr_ pushes past their own confines to greet their pure and bright _krellr_ – in this vessel and any other before – and this, at least, is a reunion as they have wished it.

 

\--

 

Hela, in the end, is not interested in The Devil – not, as they think, the other should be because it is a slight upon the glory of The Devil that Hela would disregard them in such an open manner. Then again it does make the bargain for the _krellr_ easier on them – The Devil returns to Midgard with them.

Hearth Keeper takes a last look around when the _krellr_ settles back into the chest of the pale Midgardian; they take a look at The Archer, they give the cool face of The Devil a last pat and turn their eyes towards the large stature of The Guard, their eyes low and deep watching like those of an Eagle, they might not want to admit it yet, but their own _krellr_ is already morphing to strand with those of the others.

And then their eyes fall unto the spectacular marvel that is The First Child.  
The Archer lets go.

_Beautifully foreseeable ._

 

###

 

The words rude-awakening have never been so true as now. Because all she can remember is the void in her chest that felt as if air wasn’t getting there, she remembers watching herself as she acted and not actually feeling what she was doing, she remembers the panic rising in her and the moment when she started to fight only to notice that Matt was dying under her hands and this was helping him but she had to fight it because there was no air but she couldn’tpossiblediewhiletryingtosavehimandthere’snoairnoairnoairnoair…

“It’s okay. It’s okay.”

The second part of the awakening consists of filling her lungs with as much air as she possibly can. Her mouth tastes as if she’s just thrown up, her head hurts as if she’s bashed it against the counter repeatedly, and she feels clammy – which is mostly cleared up when she tries to leave behind the darkness surrounding her and open her eyes. But even then her vision is blurred and it makes sense, in a far away detached sort, that it should be like this because she is crying.

“Listen to my heartbeat.”--the voice comes again and she knows that voice; she knows the arms around her. “You can hear my heartbeat I know that, come on girl, listen. Just listen.”

And Darcy pushes deeper into the fast embrace of Clint until she can only hear his heart and the rush of blood in her own ears, in his arms and loses herself in the secure sensation of the warmth of his chest, the cradle of his legs around her chilly body. Clint is a surrounding entity and right now that is all she wants to know, all she wants to feel and notice.

So she shuts out everything else.

 

###

 

Once Darcy falls into a sort of catatonia Clint moves her to the end of the booth, makes her comfortable and stands – it’s too soon to leave her, but The Devil is still on the make-shift operation-table and they cannot leave him there like this. So he stitches up Matt with the kind of shock-induced steadiness to his hands that comes from years of thriving in situations like these.

The tall dark man has not budged from his position, even when Kate congregates on him, shivering and insecure about what they had all just witnessed. Clint himself is… well, in state of not quite there yet, adrenaline too amped up to properly compute the situation besides the fact that he’s chosen ‘stay’ instead of ‘run’.

But Matt has survived a wound that usually doctors and nurses in hospitals would have fought to treat properly while keeping the man alive – and Darcy… or whatever it is that has pushed… there was something…

He swallows. Breathes out.  
Makes another stitch.

Matt will live to fight another day; that is more than he could possibly have expected after a run in with… _Thor_ whatever that thing is on the ground where Not-Darcy yanked it out and left it to fall.

It’s too late when he notices just how badly Darcy is shaking on the edges of his vision and when he turns towards her, stitches done as well as could be hoped for – he’s not a medic, but he has experience – she is already eating half of her hand in an attempt to stifle the sobs that look as if they are heaves of vomit fighting to break from her body; but the blood on her fingers is sticky and she has them in her face for exactly the split of an eye before she notices this and the tears are already running, big, fat and dangerous as she glimpses at her red hands and he’s too late when she vomits on the tiles between her feet.

He cannot hear her but he feels the panic on her skin, the spastic movement of the muscles underneath and he knows that in a matter of seconds, she is likely to try to chop her hands off with the red on them.

Darcy Lewis may be a Trooper when it comes to protecting others but he knows from experience that it is another thing entirely to come to grips with the fact that one’s mind has not been one’s own – and that is another playing field entirely.

Clint knocks her out before she has wiped her hands on her jeans for the fourth time. He feels only remotely sorry about it.

 

\--

 

Kate tells him that the man is Luke Cage and that he can be trusted – she tells him in a slow fashion, carefully pronouncing the words in order to mitigate any translation errors caused by her shivering lips. She leans heavily against the tall man when Clint has him take a hold of The Devil and heeds them follow him; Kate is vigilant as they step out of the bar and let the shadows of the night swallow them on their quiet procession through back-alleys and secret passages that Darcy’s Curious Georges hold open for them without a word as they move through the dark of the night.

They are back at the apartment complex in under half an hour; under normal circumstances it would take them longer from Greenpoint to Bed-Stuy by foot, but today Clint is carrying Darcy in his arms and Katie-Too is walking a little too close to Loony Luke who, in turn, is holding on to a figure that has two little horns protruding from their forehead.

And thus the streets move them through quicker than wings could have carried them.

 

\--

 

Because leaving Darcy alone is a one-hundred percent No-Go, he has Kate fetch Lucky and some fresh clothes and only allows Luke Cage to leave with her when she decidedly tugs him along – too shaken to be alone even for the mere amount of ten minutes. Clint thinks that this is precisely what he hasn’t wanted for her – this is precisely why he’s been an ass to her; and apparently this is precisely what happens when you stay too close to him.

He maneuvers Darcy into his bathroom and leans her against his small bathtub. While he is not going to wash her, even though she will need it – and he will make certain that Kate will be in the same room with her lest she rub her skin off or burn herself with overheated water – he can take care of the worst.

Also, but he is not going to say that out loud or even properly admit it to himself, he is acutely aware of the adrenaline still thrumming through his body, still stringing him taut and battle-ready at the smallest show of potential danger.

The washing of his own hands is quick and perfunctory and he dries off efficiently, before he fills a small steel-bowl he has for special after-mission occasions – recently he’s needed it more often than he has while running with The Avengers – with hot water. The lipstick on her face goes with the dried remnants of blood on her chin and her jawbone as he wipes a first, cautious wet towel over her skin, cradling her lulling head with a hand that he only now realizes encompasses her whole head. Clint doesn’t think that Darcy has ever appeared so tiny before.

His hands are shaking a little, he notices, and his breaths come in less regular, but he is used to these changes post-mission; he observes his decompressing in a detached, quiet manner these days. Watching it unfold more than he feels himself unraveling from whatever has happened and return to a state of humanity as it is lived and perpetrated by most people on this earth. There is no worrying hitch in either his pulse or his air-intake and so he allows the shaking of his hands and takes the moments in which he needs to consciously force his breathing into an acceptable rhythm in order for him to not start hyperventilating in a misguided attempt at compensating for a distant memory of child-asthma. But this is a known component by now and when he is done with washing her face, he has mostly retreated from the precipice of fight-or-flight.

Just as he is drying off Darcy’s neck and chin, Lucky’s golden fur enters his field of vision and Clint greets him quietly, moving to scratch at the furry neck of his friend – it grounds him hella quicker than anything should have a right to on this earth – and allows him to sniff on his human but pulls him away when the dog gets too close to her not-yet cleaned hands. Lucky allows it, but takes vigil on Clint’s side as he makes to wash off her hands as well.

Because the presence of Darcy’s companion calms him just as much as it calms the Retriever to see what is happening to his friend and because he’s somewhat certain that, on a subconscious level, Darcy would feel safer with Lucky on her side Clint doesn’t contest this when he stays even though Kate tries to call him once.

She leaves the door open when Lucky stays and gives Clint a tired nod once. He supposes that means that she will be there once he’s done.

Washing hands is trickier than cleaning a face is, considering, additionally, the fact that her fingers have been Lord knows how deep in the open chest of a man currently resting on his couch and blood got into crevices it didn’t like to leave.

Even so he prevails, making certain that the worst is, indeed, gone but deciding that, maybe, it is not such a great idea to bathe Darcy’s fingers in luke-warm water to lure the last remnants of blood out of her bitten-raw nail-beds while she was knocked out. He’s been a troublesome prankster once, no doubt, but this is not the time or the place.

And so when her hands are dried and his own heart-rate has mellowed out, he feels weary to the bone even though he stands, pats Lucky’s head and gives Kate the go-ahead to change Darcy into clothes that would make sleeping in them easier on her.

Luke Cage eyes him with quiet trepidation.  
Clint gives him a tired look.

“Please say you don’t mind a vigilante-sleepover.”--because he’s certainly not up to caring for Kate, for Darcy and for Matt all alone; he’s bad enough when he tries to fend for himself.

The tall man looks at something past his shoulder and Clint almost turns before he remembers that he stands in front of the bathroom and he’s been acting almost familiar with Kate.

He receives a nod.

For now that’s enough.

 

\--

 

Matt wakes some time in the middle of the futzing night, heaving panicked breaths and trying to escape the remnant nightmare of an aggressor and before Clint and Luke get to him, he’s already pulled some of the stitches and Clint is acutely wary of whether or not the man has managed to tear some of the deeper, fresh healing as well. He’s not certain either of them would survive a second incident with Not-Darcy.

“Where am I?”

“Condo.”--Clint replies haltingly, he has trouble reading the man’s lips what with the blood there, he’s done his best to keep the identity of his friend a secret and sometimes such a thing comes with a price.

But The Devil almost immediately slackens, allows the bone-tired weariness Clint is certain he’s still feeling – if only from his near-death experience – to take over and he gives Luke a short nod that lets the other man know it’s okay to back away as he takes the hands of Matt and starts to sign carefully.

 _Guests_.--he says first. _Hell of a night. Identity safe._

While he doubts that, after tonight, Matt’s identity would much faze either Luke or Kate much any more and he knows from experience that resting is done so much better while in civilian clothing, it’s a choice that is ultimately up to the man himself to make.

 _You stay._ \--that one is a statement he’s not about to have an argument about. He’s not letting the blind dolt out of his sight if he can; not after Darcy went transcendental on them to save his life. He needs a few answers.

“I stay.”--Matt agrees as he takes his hands back and moves them to the mask in his face. “ _Fóc_ , could I have some water and a wet towel please?”

Five in the morning has Clint help Matt take off his ruined uniform – _What the fuck got through your armor? –_ and mask, lips now easier to read even in their still bloodied state – _Cupid’s Jit I think_ – and Clint helps wash him off much as Matt washes himself off. It strikes him only then, when the cloying red is finally gone, just how close to death his friend really has been. His stitches look almost flimsy in the shivering light of his neon-bulb, barely holding the angrily swollen flesh together.

“God you ass.”

Matt could have died.

“You’re never going out alone again.”

And the lawyer might snort and he might find it absolutely hilarious; but Clint is being brutally honest. Here he’s always thought that he himself was a disaster of a vigilante, incapable of surviving without Darcy but… Boy, Matt could be almost worse than himself.

“I mean it.”--he says then, cautiously wiping over the wound again, careful of the flinch and the slow hissing intake of breath as he does so; he doesn’t want to cause the man any more pain than necessary but cleaning the wound is more important. “We’re getting you a leash you Devil Child.”

He feels a little better when Matt has to grin so widely that he dissolves into tiny giggles that might hurt his chest – but at least Clint feels less solemn and Matt will never know how close he was to crying over a man he hasn’t known for more than three months.

Later, once Matt has been cleaned and given some of Clint’s track-pants and an old, wide and clean shirt – they can be a rarity and the only reason Clint has some is because Darcy has taken to hide about three of these combos around his condo to pull out whenever she needs him to be at least a little presentable and he has nothing to wear – Clint will ask himself why it would never occur to him to cry about Natasha, when he’s known her since she’s been eighteen.

 

###

 

 

Darcy wakes and doesn’t even bother with the pounding of her head. Kate, snuggled into her arms and curled protectively around Lucky barely moves when Darcy rolls onto her back, gropes helplessly for her glasses and rolls again to slither off the mattress in a less impressive maneuver than she would have liked. To be perfectly honest, even as she kneels on the dirty rug that she knows, once her glasses sit on her nose, has to be Clint’s because she’d never condone such a shade of mint green in her own abode, she’s not quite certain she wants to try and live, but she cannot think of a reason why she should possibly have this much of a headache.

Yesterday must have done a number on her. She doesn’t even know how she came home. Probably why she’s at Clint’s.

Come to think of it: it’s probably the reason why _Kate_ is at Clint’s.

Her mouth is dry; tastes like… old socks and something fuzzy but the more she rolls her tongue around, the more she activates her salivatory glands and the less the taste remains, so when she reaches the bottom of the stairs, all that really remains in her mouth is an icky feeling to her teeth and the left-over to a morning-mouth that can definitely be cured with a glass of water.

Or a cup of coffee as it is.

Luke and Clint are both awake, staring at the table-top of Clint’s decrepit kitchen with a pot of what looks like freshly brewed Nectar Of The Gods between them. She’s just going to filch a cup and-

“Darcy-girl?”

She’s just about poured her cup, turning towards her boss, wondering what the hell Luke is doing here when-

 

_góðr morginn, myrkrdóttir_

 

-the cup falls-  
-the brown splashes turn red before her eyes, and all she sees is blood.

Blood on the ground, blood on her trousers, blood on her hands. There was blood on her face, sticky and warm and metallic and she remembers the taste of it and the dark figure on the table and suffocation.

 

 _No air_  
_no air noair_  
_noairnoair  
_ _noairnoairnoairnoairnoair_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw for all who're interested about the sit I get my Non-Norse from: vikings of bjornstad is a a good source I've found :3  
> [x](http://www.vikingsofbjornstad.com/Old_Norse_Dictionary_E2N.shtm)


	11. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Critters do flock around a light, even a merely emerging light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took kind of long with this one, and, fair warning, it might just happen to the coming chapters as well - I need to get to studying for my exams and most of my time will be spent doing that; I have, however, set time aside to write on Hearth Keeper in order to prevent a complete hiatus like the one we had before :) I hope you stick with me in spite of it :)

+++

 

“Just breathe.”--he hates this. “Calm easy breaths.”--he doesn’t know what he thought was so appealing about seeing her tiny and shivering in his arms that first time around. “Easy.”--he draws the vocals out, hopes that it calms her the way it’s supposed to. “Just breathe.”

Darcy is a mess on the floor, sitting in the remnants of this morning’s coffee, the shards of that one cup she’s somehow smuggled from her own abode into his cupboards and he hasn’t even looked but the likelihood that she just cut her soles is there. Clint has not had the presence of mind, other than to pull her into his arms – again, because it’s the only thing he can really think of doing in these situations. He doesn’t usually deal with traumatized civilians. Wanda had – once – been as far as it got; and considering she joined the avenging crew he’s not certain she even counts as a civilian.

Kate appears in his field of vision, behind Darcy, holding up a mob and a bucket, making an inquiring face that Clint responds to with a small nod, standing carefully – Darcy still in his arms. Pieces of her mug crack under his shoes.

“That was a good cup.”--he moans quietly into Darcy’s crown. “It was whole and it was pretty and I don’t even know why you put it into my kitchen.”

He’s not expecting an answer, but Darcy exhales a shaky, wet laugh against his neck and hums something that he can’t see so he pulls his head away a little. “was purple.”--she answers wetly, tears barely in her eyes any longer, but the snot ever so present on her full upper lip. She frees her hands when he sits her down on his counter.

_Purple is your favorite color for some reason._

He wants to tell her that it’s not really a favorite rather than a habit he got into when he was fourteen and purple belonged to his gear long before it even was a _gear_ instead of a costume. Purple is Hawkeye – his alter ego; the archer, the second face to him. And long before he had been Hawkeye _purple_ had meant the letting go of everything that bothered him with every arrow he loosened in the brightly illuminated manège.

It hits him then though-- “You got me a mug that wasn’t cracked?” He can’t hear himself but his voice feels… thin as he looks at her: “Just for me?”

And of course she did; it’s Darcy isn’t it – Darcy and Clint and Lucky and it comes to him, softly, carefully and with a pair of wet, beautiful, blue eyes that maybe he is a lucky son of a poor battered bitch to have someone like Darcy look for a not-cracked, purple, big mug for _him_. Just because he’s a human disaster who can’t even possess proper kitchen-ware.

“’m sorry I cracked it.”

It’s probably way beyond cracked and the edges of Clint’s mouth twitch upward in an unfamiliar motion before he shakes his head and checks for her feet – they’re brown and wet with the coffee she’s spilled on them, but there’s not a single cut to be found. “Better the mug than your skin.”--he says carefully, checking once more, cautiously guiding his roughened fingertips along the wet slide of her heel’s arch, the palm of his hand coming to encompass the sides of her sole, feeling for cuts.

Her feet are small; her second toe is almost as long as her first, large toe and her nails are painted in a dark red that bleeds almost into black. He likes it.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

Darcy’s eyes startle up from where they’ve been locked on the ‘100% organic coffee’-print on his frayed shirt and dart to his own eyes before straying over his shoulder and towards the people in the room with them.

It occurs to him that… he’s forgotten about them. Naturally now that he’s aware of them he can tell where Kate is, close to Luke and to Matt who’s – still – rather stationary on the couch and has been forbidden from his own cup of coffee so long as he hasn’t seen a person who is knowledgeable about the arts of healing. Luke has proposed a person and it would seem that Matt knows the person, somewhat – Clint has a feeling it’s the nurse that has taken shelter with them when SHIELD-shit went down; it should be good.

“Might as well.”--she allows and pushes forth on her perch, wiggling to get down from the work-space – he steps back, allows her space enough to reach solid ground under her feet.

 

-

 

If she weren’t so very collected in the way she brings it forth and if he had not been an Avenger that (a) basically found himself surrounded by Metas on a near-to constant basis and (b) was a friend of Thor Odinson he would have had her admitted to a psych-ward. Because most of what she says should not make any sense.

“You can lift the hammer?”--he’s stuck on that one, admittedly.

Darcy bites her lip and shrugs helplessly. “I did at least once, yeah. But like… I don’t know if that’s an actual side-effect from my apparently crazy-eyed healing hoodoo.”--her eyes glide over towards Matt.

“You okay there buddy?”

It’s not like she hasn’t been asking for at least ten minutes straight once she realized just why Matt has been hogging his couch like a champion all morning without even Kate contesting for space on it when, usually, she would be the first to absolutely and unashamedly claim it as hers under any other circumstance.

Again, Matt nods; gives her a careful smile and an unseeing but incredulous look. “I’m fine, Darcy-girl. We’re kind of worried about the voices you keep hearing.”--the man redirects her question. “It didn’t start before yesterday?”

She shakes her head, takes a sip of tea that Kate had prepared – the coffee had been his last; he suffers just as badly as the lawyer does in this case. “Didn’t really _start_ until today. Though… yesterday was the first time that… well… I didn’t know that they could be a separate _entity._ ”--at this she gives Clint a look that doesn’t quite catch his eyes.

“Like… Thor explained it to me as something that is inherent to me, something that is _me,_ not something that I borrowed from a meta-physical plane or whatever. The way I understood it, my being a Hearth Keeper was more an Asgardian Seal of Approval to let out that side of me that is Everybody’s Mom – 24/7. To them such a thing is very valuable, considering that those that remain to keep the hearth are basically last line of defense. Everything else – every warrior, every guardian, every king, is just cannon-fodder.”

He remembers something like this. Thor was very enthusiastic in talking about the… oh god what was the word again? His hand goes to his left eye, rubbing away an itch as he searches for the word.

“ _Afl-_ _hirða_.”--his mouth answers unconsciously to his non-verbal question; his eyes open. “Thor called them _afl-hirða_.”--and oh boy doesn’t that explain an awful lot about Darcy Lewis.

She’s never futzing moving out of here so long as he can help it.

 

-

 

Thor sits him down under the tree after a hella long trip that the other blond has spent joking about the critters on his planet and the shenanigans that the valorous Lady Sif would get up to in order to disabuse basically everyone around her of the notion that they would yet make a ‘proper lady’ of her instead of a warrior as she so desired. Clint has laughed at the appropriate times but he’s well aware that anyone talking that loudly and boisterously while on their way somewhere was getting at something bigger – and so he’s started waiting.

He doesn’t know exactly where they are, only that the SHIELD convoy Fury had put on them with the intent of keeping an eye on them has been shaken well and thoroughly by one very shifty Thor Odinson.

Now Clint knows that Thor is not all… brawn and no brain; he’s well aware that the warrior has a head that can match his muscles; he can be a strategist and a leader, on Midgard – on Earth – he just mostly chooses not to be. Clint will learn later that he is not allowed to do so, but on that day he’s not there yet.

At that point he’s just started to learn about the many ‘gods’ that there are on Asgard. The many brothers and sisters that Thor has, the children he already has, the adventures he’s went on – in the course of getting to know Thor’s family and kind, they’ve just recently encroached on the space of something that resembles politics. It’s really more a recount of the hierarchy apparent in Thor’s family but it goes with a lot of positions awarded to each and everyone.

The blond sits next to him and, for a few moments, they are both quiet, drinking in the vastness of Texas on the border to Louisiana – he’s always thought of the state as dry and desert like, the relative calm and quiet, the green around him, the grass and the swaying trees take him elsewhere; change his mind.

“It is indeed very beautiful.”--Thor smiles into himself; Clint looks over, wonders if he said something aloud, and finds the twinkling eyes of the warrior. “A friend of mine recommended I come here when I told her I would look for a secluded space. She was very explicit about the path to take. She did not disappoint.”

There’s something about Thor’s smiles that jumps over at people, it urges their own lips to twitch upwards – Clint has long but stopped trying to figure out if it Asgardian Hoodoo or if it’s simply _Thor_. He allows a small smile and looks around again. “She gives good advice if this is her idea of a secluded spot.”

It’s certainly not the back-booth of some wayward Diner in the middle of an easily surveyed city – SHIELD might just take some time until they find them.

“What got you feeling like you needed a spot this secluded?”

Because Thor can be as bad a prankster as Clint can be; Tony has found out the hard way that _Myr-Gargan_ are quite gross to deal with and has been glowering at Clint for at least the last week, although he must be aware, on some level, that Thor too has been involved. It’s probably easier to glower at a human than it is than glaring at a godlike individual – but it doesn’t seem like this is the: let me drag you out here and leave you alone to find your way back kind of joke.

Clint would know how to get back. 

Thor knows this – there would barely be any fun involved probably.

But the other man is already pulling a small wooden board from the knapsack he’s slung around his shoulder at the beginning of their small excursion and as he settles it between them, Clint is a little thrown off when it is checkered for chess. He doesn’t quite think that Thor would drag him to the middle of No-Where for a party of chess – he’s seen the blond get hideously frustrated with the small plastic figurines that wither and die in his fingers more often than not.

He doesn’t quite know what to say when Thor tries to find every last figurine he’s apparently thrown loosely into the knapsack and turns it inside-out to get at them. Surprisingly, when Thor has finished separating the blacks and whites from each other, their sets are complete. Despite their rough travels.

“I have asked my friend to lend me this; she is not necessarily fond of the game as I understand it, so she’s been very willing to allow me this.”--Thor picks up a peasant and gives Clint a look that the archer has learned to interpret as a ‘you gon’ learn today’-look; it usually yields fruitious result in the category of Clint dieing to get to know Thor’s Pet-Bilgesnipe that he apparently has on Asgard. It sounds like a domesticated Triceratops – in short: _fun_.

“We have a different way of playing what you Midgardians call _Chess_ , although it is less a fashion of playing rather than… teaching children to strategize.”

And thus he puts the peasant on a small square closer to the middle than ‘Midgardians’ would do – Clint copies him; and realizes quickly that hopefully Thor does not expect him to play because whatever it is that is happening, it makes little sense to him. The peasants are backed by the one Tower and one Bishop, flanking the King, while, at the same time, being led by both Jumpers. The Queen is at the very back and center of their respective playing field-halves, flanked by the second Tower and the second Bishop.

“This is...”--he gives the blond a look, “-strategy?”

His friend gives a tiny smile: “I reckon we shall not be going much further than this today; it is simply… to emphasize a point. See… there is a reason that this should be the traditional way of strategy on Asgard.”

So Clint learns that there is a reason that the Queen is the most valuable piece on the board – on Asgard – and he learns just _why_ Thor has taken his time about integrating his mother into the talks of positions and politics; and he learns until the sun sets and SHIELD finally finds them. He learns a new kind of reverence for Frigga – the mother who’s raised Thor, the only person to stop Odin in his way even if he was _determined._

 

-

 

And just now he’s learned that Darcy Lewis, the woman who’s been squatting in his basement, is basically Frigga 2.0; she’s the person who is scary good at knowing when his fridge is empty, she is the good Samaritan who knits and crochets new hats for the general populace. She is all of those things in the same way she is Darcy Lewis.

It’s more than that though: she is the Hearth Keeper. It is in her nature to take care of those around her – give them a _home;_ to make certain they are safe. And beyond that the Hearth Keeper is the Queen on the board; it is an entity that can move as it desires – any and all ways, it is the last line of defense before the populace. Because any threat that has managed to go through the Army and the King warrants the Big Guns.

She is the glue that keeps together an Army, she is the morale that keeps the warriors loyal even in seemingly hopeless situations.

 

-

 

“Yes, he did.” --Darcy’s mouth quivers a little at this even though her eyes are less shifty than they were before, “I keep forgetting he was your Battle Bud.”

Clint finds himself in that particular situation more often than he would like. To be honest he hasn’t thought about Big Blond for a long time… or about the Avengers – you know: aside from Nat’s habit to come pick him up whenever they have (desperate) need for an archer. He has disassociated himself from SHIELD now that it’s… whatever and well. Things around here have recently started to need his attention up close and since he’s an 110-per-cent-kind-of-guy he hasn’t spared his old team-mates a lot of thought.

It strikes him that maybe, considering the situation, he should change that.

 

###

 

Kate doesn’t move from Darcy’s side during the first week after _the incident_ and neither Clint nor Luke really do comment on it. Luke, perhaps, because he might just remember that Kate does not have a mother (and Darcy is a little too proficient in being one for all the world), and Clint because he probably feels better knowing that Darcy is not ever truly alone – if anything should happen Darcy’s Curious Georges have come to accept Kate’s _Panic Signal_ as a valid indicator to get help.

Granted there occurs not one fall-back into silver eyes and healing dead people but Kate can’t deny that she is on the lookout for it. After all, Darcy has mostly made it clear that this is a part of her; something that she has more or less been born with and therefor something that will likely happen again.

The young archer likes to be prepared – just in case. 

Which means that for about ten days she is strung tighter than Clint’s Bow before the blond pushes a blanket into her hands on the tenth evening and glares her down onto the couch where Lucky quickly settles over her and heats her into the land of dreams.

She’s a little pissed at the flea-bag the next morning, but it’s not really his fault if Clint keeps buying his loyalty with treats.

Also: she’s never going to admit that she’s needed the sleep. She’s Kate Fucking Bishop; she doesn’t apologize and she doesn’t confess squat so long as it’s not in front of a court. Clint Barton will just have to do with her show of acceptance in the form of coffee.

It would seem that he deals rather well with her underhanded methods. 

Even though he’s a heathen who takes his coffee blacker than his soul and devoid of all sugar.

 

-

 

Darcy’s Curious Georges have an affinity for finding people that do not belong to them. Kate has been there once; she’s been ostracized before taming Loony Luke and then steered into the direction of the woman who left steaming hot pizza for them to find and fill their bellies and whose trademark was a splash of bright red on her lips.

Usually in such instances _Rob_ had been a known instigator – a dark character she can only vaguely remember in flashes of yellow skin, dark teeth and the raspy breath of someone who’s been smoking a pack of cigarettes despite their age and cirrhosis. _Rob_ had had a hard life from what she’d gathered and she can see how it would make someone mean as it has him; it’s just not funny being a lone, young female living on the streets. She’s lucky Luke was not nearly as Loony as any of them thought him to be.

(Volatile and confused, yes, but not loony. Not really.)

The thing about cirrhosis though is that it’s a nasty little bugger that will see you to your early grave, see exhibit A: _Rob_. And since nature abhors a vacuum there has recently been a shift in the hierarchy around this part of town that steered herself towards Darcy Lewis.

She’s never seen Danny Rand, but there are grand myths accumulating around them already and given the young man in front of her she’s starting to believe them. Maybe. There’s been a time when the Rand name was as big as the Bishop’s and then a young boy died and things were lost to the flow of the river _Time_.

“You’re not even like… from around here.”--is all she can think of to say and the young brunet in front of her gives her a self-deprecating smile as he lifts his hand to scratch at his greasy hair.

“Well, true.”--he laughs half heartedly with the kind of Queens-Slang that has betrayed him in the first place, and, really, he looks like he wants to just disappear from where he stands right now; which might take some magic that Kate would be eager to see because he’s starting to tug at her heart-strings. “Um… is maybe… um.”

She feels Darcy behind her before she hears her and, knowing that Rand probably sent the boy and knowing, just as well, that the boy does not belong to the streets, just as much as he doesn’t belong in the system, she steps aside and allows the older woman to take a look at the newcomer.

“Hi.”--her friend starts, already stepping aside. “I’m Darcy.”

 

-

 

“How do you manage to pick them up with just a look?”--Barton asks over dinner when Peter has sat down with them, showered and given fresh clothes from the blond archer himself. Kate is curious as well, knowing, now, what she hasn’t known about Peter Parker before.

Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man indeed. 

Bed-Stuy is not even his turf.

Darcy gives him a mocking smirk over the make-shift table they have built in his living room as she reaches for the rice over an episode of Dog Cops that is quickly losing her interest. “Maybe, Mr. Jack-booted thug, the accurate question should be: how come that after years of working for SHIELD and with Dr Jane Foster, ensuing in your stay at my apartment complex recently invaded by Daredevil and a Strongman, you’ve picked up identifying marks of a super-hero?”

Proportionally to Darcy’s climbing eyebrow, Barton sinks into himself. 

Kate enjoys this show much more than the TV and shovels the rice into her mouth on automatic – she’s been championing chop-sticks since age five and her second Thai Nanny. Peter Parker, a recent member of the hobo groups in Flushing, well along the way with his chopsticks though nowhere near her, has equally abandoned Channel Twelve and is watching the verbal tennis match just as eagerly. Lewis has a strong hand today.

Barton waves off in a way that lets all the world know he’s surrendering to the sound logic of one Darcy Lewis. At the very least Hawkeye knows what battles to pick.

“Alright so what do we do with the runt?”

Darcy throws a spring-roll at the blond that he promptly fails to catch and Kate watches, with Parker, as quicker than light can hit the eye Lucky has gobbled it up. Darcy is already wildly gesticulating.

“ _I know you can’t hear, you ass, but the boy can so would you mind your words?_ ”--Barton has the decency to look sheepish as he turns towards Peter.

“Sorry.”--he shrugs; motioning towards his ears. “I am kinda deaf.”

Peter returns the shrug, nods in acknowledgment and continues to slurp his noodles with practiced street-efficiency. Darcy is giving the blond a look, then Peter and Kate knows – oh god she knows that the runt is going to stay because Darcy has given her that look too. Still does on occasion.

It’s the kind that says ‘I’m going to feed you forever.’

It’s kind of a lovely thing to witness.

Also: she’s always sort of wanted a sibling. Looks like it’s a boy.

 

-

 

She’s not surprised that they keep him. Peter Parker has a lot of troubles that she kindly allows for him to talk about with Darcy and Barton in private – because she’s not an idiot and these kinds of things tend to be better talked about under fewer eyes. All she needs to know is that it was enough for a teenage super-hero to land on the streets with no way back to where he comes from and no support. Hey, it sounds a little familiar but that’s exactly why she doesn’t mind the runt.

Barton’s name’s going to stay though. 

Runt. She likes it and, frankly, the shoe kind of fits, doesn’t it.

And she doesn’t even mind when Barton picks him up as well to run a few obstacle courses that, honestly, he shouldn’t have the time to build. But they’re fun and winding and by noon Darcy has to separate her and The Runt while simultaneously getting them down from the monkey bars where Barton has been egging on their full-blown ego-show-down who could possibly make more passes without usage of meta-human powers.

She catches Darcy sign something to Barton despite the fact that he’s still prone on the floor from where he’s been shouting what could possibly pass for encouragement – if they weren’t vile comparisons on whose upper body strength was greater. Kate is an archer, her upper body strength is immaculate – it would be a slight on her honor to have the Runt undermine her.

And since she is winning either way (Peter had been beginning to give her bug-eyed looks, but that’s where the fun had started) and he acquiesced to listen to the woman of the house, they both drop onto the large, thick, crash-mat adrenaline rushing to their heads as they lean backwards onto it; arms filling with blood, tingling until they’re cotton-soft-lead-weights at their sides.

Darcy snorts over their flushed heads. “You good for food or will your arms compete for my spaghetti.”

“We have been touched by His Noodly Appendage and are now ready for his ceremonial feast.”

And, seriously, Kate should have known that if she got a brother he was going to be weird. But hey, Pastafari, she can dig it.

 

###

 

Peter is put in the apartment with Hawkeye by decree of Darcy – which feels a little like going from Zero to Hero. Even though Clint is dead-set on sticking to Logan’s nickname for him. Because Hawkeye has seen him work with Logan; Peter has seen the apartment-complex already – back in December of last year, not too long ago actually. And Clint is well aware that, at a point in the past, Spider-Man has been a SHIELD Agent under the wing of Nicholas Fury.

“Thank you for not saying anything.”

The blond shrugs when they’ are done preparing Clint’s decrepit excuse for a couch in order for Peter to sleep on. No matter how much of a death-trap the archer insists it is, Peter is certain that it looks like heaven from where’s he standing.

“’s not so much for you as it is for SHIELD, kid.”--the blond returns. “You’re not yet current on the news around here, but they didn’t send you to Darcy Lewis for now reason.”

Yeah. He’s heard the rumors on the streets – can’t quite believe them until he’s really seen it, but he tends to think of himself as open-minded. And if there exists a Dr Strange and all his weird magics, additionally to Asgardians and their _seidr_ why should there not be an equivalent to Hestia to this melee? To keep the balance at some point?

Sounds completely logical to him.

As if sensing his more or less understanding of the situation, Clint gives him a glinting side-eye. “They just got torn a new one by HYDRA, I don’t think they’d survive The Hearth Keeper comin’ for ‘em jus’ yet.”

“You’ve seen her?”--Peter wants to know as he sits down on the couch, sinking into bliss already as he clutches at a pillow that smells so unused Peter has to wonder if the archer has ever even used it.

“Them.”--the man corrects a little unfocussed, “Yeah.”--but even though the younger man burns for _more_ , he doesn’t elaborate. Peter takes it and slips under the blanket as the older man sits down at the height of his knees, starting to sort through his arrows with soft clacking noises to the flimmer and shimmer of a re-run of _Dog Cops_. While before he would have hooked in, asked for what he wanted to know, he’s learned to not always ask questions; to observe and keep his mouth shut; to not immediately jump to conclusions no matter what nature they may be. He doesn’t think of people as inherently good any longer, nor inherently bad, either. Recently it’s felt good not thinking about people at all.

“Go to sleep, runt.”

It’s kind of weird that he misses Logan though.

 

-

 

He hasn’t been around SHIELD long enough to actually go through any of the official training programs and exams to garner clearance, even though Fury let him know that should he manage to stick around for longer than a month, he’d be enrolled automatically in what was effectively speaking SHIELD Academy.

Unfortunately the whole thing broke apart before even his 14-day-marker could be properly reached – which did nothing for his personal information that made it right along all the other intel during the info dump and was thus available to pretty much everyone. He doesn’t know where it went; apparently not even Stark knows where it went, but what he does know is that SHIELD turned HYDRA on his Aunt May in a quest to get at him.

It’s not a coincidence that the very street he’s been practically raised in went up in flames in the course of ‘freak electrical and or gas accidents’ caused by supposed tremors.

Frankly speaking, though, he has not had the strength to go look. 

He doesn’t think he has anywhere to go back to.

And thus the streets swallowed him, Flushing especially, where the homeless did not ask twice when his stomach rumbled and a small twig of a man found him contemplating the left-overs in a dumpster. He’d been given luke-warm noodles instead, and a crash course in handling chop-sticks that have since not left his breast-pocket.

Three months into his stint on the streets and he’s gotten proficient in wielding the chop-sticks; he knows what places to defend in order to sleep there later; he has a good grip on where to get food. He watches out for the elderly around him – because he is the youngest it’s easier for him to make more food runs and feed them first.

In return, he is given a name and an address. He goes there without really questioning why – and until he sees Clint Barton nothing clicks.

 

-

 

He’s heard stories of The Hearth Keeper while he had still been at SHIELD. Mostly because Thor was a good story-teller and SHIELD bugged their agents down to their under-wear; he knows, he’s seen the forms on Coulson’s desk. It’s been a serious cause for reconsideration of joining the organization at one point.

Either way – apparently the Norse God went missing one day and no effort had been spared in finding him including recruiting a barely-yet-agent in the form of Spider-Man. If the reports were correct he was found some time in the evening in the middle of nowhere Texas-border-Louisiana; some National Park.

But the report spoke, too, of an activated bug that had managed to filter all kinds of intel on whatever had been going on while Thor had been AWOL – and it seems that there had been some uproar about whatever had happened; because the upper SHIELD levels couldn’t stop chattering about it for days. As long as it took for Fury to return from a self-imposed diplomatic mission and call his agents to order with nothing but a stern look and a foreboding Snape-Swish of his black leather coat.

Peter never found out all the details. 

Just enough to know that whoever this Hearth Keeper was, she packed some serious punch. Enough to warrant Odin thinking twice about opposing her and usually choosing not to. Just enough to think that maybe having such a person on Earth for a change wouldn’t be so bad. Just enough to pray to them at night, sometimes, under his breath, when the rain dripped into his neck and he couldn’t move for fear of falling into the puddle that was spreading just a hand-width away from him.

He’s always kind of liked the idea of Hestia. 

The woman who keeps the home-fires safe, the goddess who chose to help humanity and gave Prometheus a portion of her fire to carry to the beings that lived in darkness and coldness.

But because Earth is a vast place, simply relished in the idea of her and hadn’t bothered to go looking – didn’t even know what he would do if he’d find her and he wouldn’t want to put another person in danger. Aunt May had once been his homing-beacon after all; and look how that turned out. Yet for some reason, he’s found that person, that bright red lipstick and those startling blue eyes and he can’t imagine them silver, but he feels, before he’s even set foot into the apartment complex, that he is safe. That he can stop running from the darkness that is eating away at him from the insides.

Darcy Lewis is nothing like he’d imagined her while, at the same time, being precisely just that. It’s a weird dichotomy that takes a few days to get accustomed to and before he knows it, he accompanies Kate to fetch Darcy from her job and bask in the warm glow that she emits on their way home, shadowed by homeless folk that Darcy likes to call Curious Georges and leave Hot Pizza on the corners for. He doesn’t see the Hearth Keeper any time soon and talk about the entity, as Clint explains it to him, is generally avoided, but he can see how the shoe would fit.


	12. Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your kind and encouraging words and comments I love reading them and it makes me happy to see just how much you feel with the characters I weave into this - Thank you, so much, for reading and enjoying this story as much as I enjoy writing it :) 
> 
> So, hey, yay I managed with just one day of delay :3 Hope you enjoy

+++

 

He thinks he’s being funny with his bitten-off chop-sticks, always making certain that they are in his breast pocket when out of his gear and close by even when he is _in_ regalia. Darcy has noticed; it’s not difficult to. And if she’s honest she _is_ kind of wondering about it, but because everyone has their small hang-ups she leaves him the chop-sticks; doesn’t try to talk him out of it. Even though she also doesn’t step in when Clint and Kate both remind him, repeatedly, that they could be a hazard on the field. Memorabilia or not they have a point.

Peter hasn’t yet returned with the wood impaled into his arm or elsewhere yet though… So Darcy doesn’t step in and she doesn’t try to talk him out of them. There is something worrying about the way he _clings_ to them and Darcy… does not think that they’re there.

Not yet.

 

-

 

“I had a friend.”--Peter says one evening.

They are trying to gaze at stars; but only manage to stare at the smog that is sometimes illuminated by a wayward sky-light. Vision is bad tonight but that has never stopped Darcy and it certainly isn’t impeaching the young man from keeping her company. Staring up at the dark void can have its charms too.

He huffs a small, self-deprecating smile. “I had several friends.”--he corrects himself, and even though Darcy turns her head to look at him, give him her full attention, he doesn’t quite return the motion. Stares at his fingers instead, plays with the laces of his shoes.

“But he was… different.”--a small pause. “I could have gone to him probably. I don’t know-”

Darcy knows almost immediately where his mind is stuck. She’s been there; she knows the circles he’s walking in his mind intimately and close up. The ‘Why didn’t I go there’s and ‘If only I’d swallowed my pride’s. She waits him out, taking in the slumped picture of a teen-aged hero-vigilante.

“I don’t know why I didn’t go to him. Because I know he’d have taken me in; he’d have helped me. I don’t- Why didn’t I- Why wouldn’t-?”

He stops, swallows, collects himself as he finally looks at her and he is a sort of beautiful, this young broken Spider; silhouette set off against the mesh of pale blue lights of offices and warm golden hues of street-lamps behind him. His hoodie belonged to Clint at some point but the blond washed it too hot which means that it fits Peter – or would… will: as soon as she gets some weight back on his bones.

“I would have loved to go, sometimes.”--he admits. “But I didn’t. And I learned how to use chop-sticks instead.”

Darcy pulls her throw a little higher around her chin – summer isn’t quite here yet and the nights can be just as chilly as they can be sweltering – and puts a hand to his knee, careful and with large, announced movements she’s quickly learned will cause less flinching and freezing up on Peter’s part (and she’s going to rain hellfire on whoever is the cause of that) and simply lets it rest there. They soak in their quiet before Darcy even attempts to find the right words to speak.

“When I lost my job I kind of lost the rest of my life.”--she starts. “Like…”-apart from Jane, “-I didn’t have an income so my phone had to go and I couldn’t really wash and I was hungry most of the time and I am _not_ going into detail about gender-specialized hygienic subjects.”

Peter draws a moue of commiseration; there’s something he’s not quite telling her but she can deal with that. She has learned to wait.

“But it never once occurred to me that I could have called my friends from college. Or that I could go to a shelter – trust me I can _not_ emphasize how much I did not want to go there.”--she pauses shortly. “I read once that poverty, de-socializes and while the concept is easy to grasp theoretically you don’t really realize what it means until you’ve really been there and it came to me at that point that – yeah: I was not going to be social when my smell offended my own nostrils; and I was not going to go to dinners with friends when I could barely pay for half a slice of cheese; and I was not going to go partying when all I owned was a pair of jeans, three shirts and one pullover.”

She draws her hand back and tilts her head up to stare at the single, off-white spot that is the moon above them. There’s a lot of things she wants to tell him. That she’s glad he’s found them. That he did what he had to in order to survive and that there is absolutely no shame in that – none at all. The instinct of survival brings you to new and wondrous realizations, yes, but there is no shame in surviving. She wants to tell him that she understands him.

Instead she looks at him and gives his knee a little jiggle. “Whenever you’re ready, you could always call him and have him over.”--she offers instead and the small widening of his eyes, barely even noticeable in the city-night if it weren’t for her eyes having long gotten used to functioning in somber environments, lets her know that at the very least she’s given him an idea to chew on.

 

-

 

He’s kind of a genius.  
She doesn’t know how she’s managed to overlook that.

Sure Peter is quiet most of the time and he can sneak around better than Kate or Clint can, especially because he has the advantage of climbing walls if he really wants to go unseen – what amazes Darcy is that when she finds him tinkering is just how silent he is while working.

Now she’s seen Jane work on her appliances and that had always involved a lot of muttering into a beard that the tiny scientist would never grow without some serious Asgardian Hoodoo, hitting self-made-machines that wouldn’t cooperate and gallons of coffee. She’s seen Tony Stark work – on very rare occasions and only through glass-windows, like an exhibit in a museum – and that has always included ACDC or any other kind of old-school hard rock as well as a lot of gloating, gallons of coffee and, of course, JARVIS. And coffee. Ever since moving in, she’s also caught Clint working on his arrows and gadgets and that has always involved cursing, grunting and taking huge, greedy gulps of coffee in between the gentle clicking of whatever it was that Clint’s arrows are made of.

Peter is different.

When she ‘catches’ him first, she is returning from a grocery-run – because four mouths and a flea-bag eat a hell of a lot more than two do – and stashing away Clint-bribes in the form of Nachos, Nic-Nacs and Salted Peanuts (Popcorn in the kitchen because they are not the microwave kind and Clint doesn’t dare prepare them) where (a) he cannot immediately find them and (b) she can have access to them at all moments.

He is sitting in the living room, with a thermos she doesn’t doubt is full of coffee, his materials spread out before him on a white, cared-for piece of cloth which he has spread over the small table that is usually their improvised dining-table. He is tinkering with something small in his hands, eyes focused on the task, hands still and precise, mouth closed – he doesn’t even look up when Darcy comes in.

And so she learns that Peter Parker is a very quiet sort of tinkerer. He gets lost in his machinations, works almost meditatively and it’s only when she very carefully edges into his field of vision that he re-emerges from his quiet kind of stupor.

“Hm?”

Darcy has seen that look of coming-out-of-a-science-binge too often to not recognize it immediately and something in her lurches a little uncomfortably with a hot flash of _Jane_ before it settles into a well-known role. “You eat anything?”--she asks, gently because she has his attention and there is no need to startle the scientists when they are coming out of it, as she removes the thermos and replaces it with a cup of green-tea.

Not surprisingly he shakes his head. 

Darcy nods and opens her hand, quietly demanding the trinket he’s been working on. “If you give me that and eat something now, I’ll give it back to you afterwards and not disturb you again until dinner.”

She says it slowly and quietly – tests the waters that she thinks would be better to be smooth around Peter. Jane had always needed a little push and shove to give in; but she doesn’t peg Pete as the same kind of science-nerd as her JaneTM. He does give her the gadget, swaps it for the smoothie bowl she’s prepared for him – the two young-ones are as much fanatics for all sorts of fresh produce as Darcy is and Clint isn’t – and a half-liter bottle of water.

He is complacent in his intake, if quick, and once it is all done, Darcy – as promised – hands back the gadget and leaves. Until dinner she makes certain that neither Clint nor Kate interrupt the young man as slowly the small thing in his hand becomes a little larger and then, finally, assembles into something that might just resemble an arrow-head. But as dinner rolls around Darcy doesn’t even have to call him out of his science for it; he’s already at her side, quiet and still a little in his science-head-space, but there.

A week later he presents both Kate and Clint with a prototype Putty-Arrow and Darcy helps Clint to make room in the attic for a small lab. Mostly because Clint is way too enthusiastic about Putty-Arrows.

 

###

 

Luke likes the boy.  
He can see why the Homeless Folk around wanted him off the streets though.

There is something _tiny_ about the young man despite the fact that the T-shirts he wears now that the weather is getting warmer depict, indeed, quite the muscle on him, sinewy as he may be. He is a clever head, Luke has been able to tell from the first few moments and it was confirmed when the boy vanished under the counter to fiddle around with his Premix when the darn thing wouldn’t work – again – only to emerge with a triumphant smile, leaving Luke with an optimally working equipment.

The fact that he’s a hero-vigilante himself comes up at a later – much later – date and by then Peter Parker already has his seal of approval. If only for the fact that he accompanies Kate almost every-where despite her ceaseless arguments that she can protect her damn self; can’t hurt to have two of them traipsing around in any case. Darcy seems to agree.

 

-

 

He knows he’s struggling with giving up his need for secrecy.

Carl Lucas is still kind of a wanted man after all, even if he managed to escape the fuzz – thrice by now, at the very least, although the documents on Luke Cage being Carl Lucas somehow _magically_ disappeared into whatever abyss it could disappear into. He ain’t complainin’.

Nevertheless he’s been aiming to keep it quiet around him. It was bad enough that street folk was very well aware not only of his being Carl Lucas but also looking to him in terms of peaceful grounds to step on and into if ever that was needed – after-hours, naturally.

Now, however, he’s realized that running away… yeah he could do that, everyone could do that. But in the end you couldn’t quite outrun yourself could you? He was always going to be a Strong-Man, as Darcy had called him, and he was always going to run into people like him – they are a fact of nature after all, most of the time.

And Darcy… Darcy hadn’t even known she is what she is and now she is and she’s working for him and he does neither have an inclination to kick her out, nor does he like playing with the thought of running. Although he has, admittedly.

“You okay there, Luke?”

Kate surprises him as she slinks into his personal space, pulling him into an easy embrace that grounds him so much better than any and all nights of meaningless-but-supposedly-life-affirming sex ever could.

Tiny Bishop is another reason he doesn’t want to leave. 

She might not know it, but he’s always missed the ease that came with family, with friends, and it has taken him this slip of an angry young woman camping outside of his cardboard-hovel under the bridge despite all sorts of warnings to realize it.

His arms come around her frail frame pull her a little closer, feeling her sink into an embrace that is as much family to her as it is to him. It’s good to not have to worry about breaking her any moment what with Darcy’s food-schedule. “As good as it gets, Tiny Bishop.”--he responds, smirking at the ‘’m not tiny’ that gets muffled in their embrace.

 _Forward_.--Pops had said. _Always, always forward._

 

-

 

They call the boy ‘The Runt’ - or at least Clint and Kate do – and, for some reason, it sticks with Luke when he talks to Matt about the newest addition to Darcy’s Crew. They shouldn’t stick together like they do, maybe; shouldn’t work together at night but Clint has a way of finding them on his patrols and sticking to their hides that makes them almost feel like some ill-begotten-semblance-of-a-team.

And so Matthew Murdock patronizes his joint every now and then when he feels like stepping out somewhere that is not Hell’s Kitchen with his work-colleagues. The first time he brings his law-buddies, Luke recognizes Karen Page from the Daily Bugle with a flinching intake of breath. She’s been on a lot of sites he’s been cause and center of in the last year and he can tell by the way that her eyes light up for a split second that she recognizes him too. It’s just as well, he thinks, waiting, the next few days, for the big reveal in the Bugle and missing it entirely because it never comes.

“Karen knows about me too.”--Matt divulges on another evening when only his friend, Foggy, and himself have come in. At one-fifty in the morning Foggy Nelson is well under-way of waking up with a head-ache and a cotton-mouth but that is, apparently, not stopping him the slightest from attempting to drown his sorrows in a Solo-Tequila-Act. It’s actually quite impressive; if it weren’t so worrying.

“She knows about a lot of people.”--he continues when he sets a glass of water in front of Foggy that the man downs like he’s downed his shots until now; Luke just watches and listens. Because apparently Kate and Frank Castle are kind of a thing as well.

“How can you be ‘kind-of-a-thing’ with a man that calls himself The Punisher?”--he wonders, giving Matt a look that the other man may not see but can probably damn well interpret perfectly by the pitch of his voice or something.

Indeed the lawyer gives him a crooked smile and lifts a shoulder in a Gallic Shrug.

Luke shakes his head and puts another glass of water in front of Foggy that the man downs without question before going back to his Tequila. Seriously what is it with the people from Hell’s Kitchen?

 

-

 

They return to Clint’s place after a night filled with heavy-hitters and Harlem shaking in its boots from the appearance of The Devil at the side of Luke Cage in a small skirmish against Shades’ enforcers looking to tear up a children’s shelter.

“The place is ours.”--Shades hisses. “We have _interest_ in it.”

And, better than Luke perhaps, Matt understands just exactly what that means from where he has the other man dangling from a rooftop by only one leg. The way Shades is trying to jab at the man in the mask he reminds Luke of a kitten batting at a disapproving parental unit. The Devil sways the man at the reply, grinning a dangerous little grin that is barely the split of lips and more a show of teeth. “More than you have in your life?”--he rasps.

Luke is rather impressed just how well Matt hides his strength during the day, how little of it he actually employs and instead hides with actor-like proficiency. He’s seen Matt in action before – sort of – but he’s never quite realized that The Devil and Matthew Murdock are, indeed, two different personas that just happen to don the same vessel.

He wonders, quietly, if this is similar to Darcy’s circumstances, missing Shades’ retort completely.

“Give us a week.”--Luke barters then, stepping right into an increasingly hostile conversation between the two men and doesn’t miss the way Shades’ eyes reflect eerily in the light that illuminates him from below. He goes for a longer period of time than he’d really need to evacuate the shelter and isn’t all that surprised when the smarmy smirk on Shades puce face makes an appearance – spiting his circumstances.

“Lukey-boy.”--he sings, “’s not that easy.”

He knows that; it never is and he’s well aware that Mariah has the Russians breathing down her neck since the passing of Cotton-Mouth and his own consequent appearance on the political plan. During the chaos he caused the _Nagy_ had convinced themselves that the Harlem market was just waiting for them – Black Mariah had other opinions; but not quite the same thrall or fire-power. Luke is well aware of all this, he just rather the competition underestimate him. He loves catching people off guard in such a manner; doesn’t happen all that often being his size and it’s a funny feeling.

Probably kind of like Tiny Bishop must feel.

“Four days.”--he offers instead of rising to the bait and Shades actually _contemplates_ this before he attempts to shrug.

“Fine.”

Just for shits and giggles, though, Luke doesn’t protest when Matt ties Shades to the railing and leaves him hanging over the edge of the rooftop screaming and yammering (and hopefully pissing his pants). Mostly he trusts that The Devil knows his knots. It isn’t until they return to the shelter to clean up the damage and mess they’ve caused that they find Clint and Cohorts packing up the groaning low-lives they’d punched through earlier that evening.

“Fuzz is on their way.”--he informs them when Spider Man helps him to string up a pack of three thugs over a lamp-post. “We should probably talk.”--and he might not look much like a leader when he vanishes into a side-alley to take the rooftops, but they follow either way. Because he’s right. And because Luke is curious about the Spider Twerp’s connection to Clint (and to Darcy).

But when they arrive at the apartment complex, there is only Clint and Darcy. Luke is a little disappointed – he likes the Spider-Twerp.

 

-

 

“Spider-Twerp.”--Kate snorts into her coffee, inelegant and sleepy but irrefutably amused by this. The Runt – Luke meets him for the first time in person that morning – presents himself as Peter Parker and gives his sister a dirty, tired look over the rim of his own cup, increasing Tiny Bishop’s merriment of the situation. She chortles when he sets away his own cup.

“You’re just jealous there’s not a hero stemming from Park Ave.”--he grunts, voice rough and sleep-laden and, Luke notes that he does actually look kind of beat. Grimy hair, rings under his eyes and the full-blown slowness that comes with not having gotten enough sleep.

Kate’s smile turns sharp at this. “Aw. Did I offend your teensy-queensy feelings?”--she sing-songs with a scratch to her words and instead of answering The Runt sticks his tongue out at her and steals a slice of apple from her plate. Boy has quick fingers he notes; would’ve done good as a thief probably.

Luke leans back and watches them bicker. It’s kind of surprising, actually, sleeping over because he found himself a little too sleepy after Darcy filling them up with actual, healthy food that even Matt didn’t mind taking home with him and waking up to find himself surrounded by… _family_. He tries thinking of another word for it, but can’t come up with something fitting.

Matt would have appreciated this – he muses as he leans back into the lumpy cushioning of Clint’s decrepit couch and simply lets the scene wash over him. Darcy’s cooking drowns the small apartment in the pleasing smell of eggs and bacon, mingling with the scent of brewing coffee, the fresh strawberries on the table and the cereal in Clint’s bowl. The rising sun paints the back of Peter’s head, as well as Kate’s side, golden warming the room and tickling the Basil on the window-sill.

 _Forward_ , he thinks and takes a deep breath, _always forward._

 

###

 

Kate isn’t too happy about him leaving and he gets it – he doesn’t really want to go either, not when there’s training to be done with Peter and her. Not when the Russians are rearing their heads closer to home than necessary. But Nat’s indicated that whatever is happening has a high enough priority to warrant him tearing himself away from his home (and hearth). So he packs up. Despite the fact that he won’t even be able to properly say his good-byes to Darcy what with her being at work.

_He hates leaving her in the middle of the night._

“I need you to adhere to the patrol-system.”--he instructs the two kids quietly over his methodical rummaging in several cupboards that hold an assortment of his weaponry. He doesn’t like stashing them all in one place. “I mean it. I don’t want you gallivanting around Solo because you think you’re above all that and get hurt in any way, okay?”

He hasn’t had _that talk_ with Kate yet; is stalling to the point of avoiding it but he thinks that maybe – just maybe – Matt’s recent brush with death has managed to instill into her at least a smidgen of the reason why he would be so adamant about this. Why he’s been such a cunt to her the first time he met her shooting that bow and arrow.

Peter nods once, big and exaggerated but Clint has to take it for what it is because Nat is going to fetch him in about fifteen minutes and he doesn’t want her any where near his apartment complex. Not yet and maybe not ever. Nat may have helped him buy it in the first place and she may have stayed at his side the longest – as long as she could manage being off the job – but it’s not just about the two of them now.

It’s about Darcy, it’s about Kate, it’s about The Runt and in a way it’s about Luke and Matt as well. He can’t just compromise them like that. And with Nat they _would_ be compromised; she’s a honed weapon on missions, she misses nothing and sometimes she still shoots before her brain catches up. Clint can’t have that.

Darcy would not be safe if SHIELD came upon the intel that she is the very same Hearth Keeper that Thor had waxed poetic about keeping the old New Triskelion in a titter for a week – he’s still not entirely certain _which_ SHIELD he’s talking about and if what is currently being widely acknowledged as the ‘true’ left-over of SHIELD is even completely free of any sorts of Squid-devotees. But anything that endangers Darcy endangers the kids and – to some extent – also Luke and Matt.

And he _likes_ them.  
All of them.

Granted it’s something possessive and almost-sometimes a little feral in the right – wrong – moments concerning Darcy but beyond the beautiful woman, who would get him a purple cup because he’s crap even at owning proper dishware, he likes the young aspiring archer whom he dares to call tentative friend and the he likes the bar-keep who looks like he could brawl with Thor and get away without a scratch and he likes the Spider-Twerp and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen who almost died in his hands.

He’s also way too fond of Lucky to even think about giving him up and Stark has an allergy so that would, indeed, be a discussion.

These are his people – his folk. These are the ones who do not shy back from his deaf, antisocial ass. They have occupied his couch, they have taken over his living room and his bathroom and his house and he can’t remember when he’s last been sitting on the roof all on his lonesome.

Therefore he meets Nat several blocks away from his apartment, slipped into full Hawkeye-Regalia even before he’s off his own roof and on his way to another – he pretends not to notice Kate and Peter following him. Their stealth is (mostly) abominable, gotta have to do something about that as soon as he gets back.

 

-

 

He’s missed Wanda though, admittedly. And judging by the way she eases into his somewhat awkward embrace she might have as well.

“You okay, kiddo?”--he rumbles softly, pulling her hair back as she sinks into him, mumbling something into his shoulder that he cannot see or hear; he snorts at her tired effort. “Can’t hear you like that.”--he soothes quietly, glaring at Tony over the shoulders of the young woman as the other man makes to interrupt their reunion.

 _Glad you’re here—_ Wanda’s voice rasps through his mind. It’s been some time since he’s last heard another’s voice and he stills shortly before he pulls her somewhat closer still.

“Glad to be here.”--he replies before he lets her go.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised when he took so easily to training Kate and Peter; it’s nothing he hadn’t been doing for Wanda after all: made certain she rested for a healthy amount of time, made certain she ate the good stuff, made certain she didn’t miss Pietro too much during her transition, made certain she felt integrated with them.

New Avengers Facility has done wonders on her; put her weight up to healthy, her pallor gone and replaced with marble-like skin, white and seemingly unbreakable. He smirks, pushes his knuckles against her jaw-bone when the moment becomes too quiet for either of them and she smiles at the familiar gesture.

 _Chin up, soldier–_ she muses in the depths of his mind and he smirks again, pulls her into a one-armed hug as they turn towards Tony whose mouth is moving a little too fast for Clint to read properly – he’s also not used to the chewing gum in the man’s mouth, warping his speech even further to his eyes.

“What’s he goin’ on about?”--he asks Wanda quietly when he has to give up trying to read the fast moving lips of the genius.

_He has built hearing-aids for you, he would like to know if you’d be amenable to test them._

 

-

 

Clint realizes he’s walked into a soft trap a week later – arms wide open even.

He’s been so fucking drunk on _hearing_ the world around him that it hasn’t, once, crossed his mind as odd that he hadn’t left on any of the missions with the team. He’s busied himself – or rather, has been busied – working with the young-ones instead; built obstacle courses for Cap’s Secondary Team: the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, the Falcon and the War-Machine.

They’ve been failing a particular challenge for three days straight now and it’s frustrating on all sides. Clint won’t budge from his spot as make-shift instructor, though maybe because he’s finally noticed that his old team had been leaving for missions they neither briefed him on nor told him about, and he’s noticed that he’s not eating with them either –he doesn’t quite know what to do with the intel for a day before he realizes that tutoring is not actually why he’s come here. The B-Team, it’s what they are and there’s no shame in addressing it like that, is frustrated because they’re failing and this gets the A-Team on his case.

Cap specifically.

“Why not introduce them to it step by step?”--the other blond wonders and Clint takes a look around the room, thinks of the blue-prints and programming that has gone into it and has the sudden urge to tell him just how rambunctious Peter and Kate would be in a setting like this. The archer has to bite his lips in order to not tell the good captain that his kids would have made it in two days.

Because they’re stubborn.

And because they work together like a well-oiled machine, relying on each other in the right moments despite the fact that they cannot have known each other for longer than a month now.

This is when he realizes that he’s been here a week. 

A week without Kate riling up The Runt over breakfast; a week without patrolling with either Daredevil or Luke. A week without Lucky.

“Clint?”

A week without Darcy.

“Will a battle-situation introduce itself to them step by step?”--he asks instead, crosses his arms and looks on the ground, mulling over the wisps of the thoughts he’s just had, wonders quietly about them as he avoids the eyes of the tall man. “I _have_ been training them up for this; if they’d just tilt their head to the right side instead of the left they’d recognize it too.”

He smirks a little because that is, literally, what Darcy likes to do when a puzzle doesn’t make sense. Naturally her head will tilt to the left when confused and if it, still, doesn’t make any sense then, she tilts her head to the other side, sees what happens there. The mien is still on his lips when he looks up to find the confused look of The Captain and he makes a decision.

“Look. I’m gonna head home. You have your people to train your B-Team and to be quite honest I miss my lumpy couch.”

And Darcy. And Kate. And The Runt.

“Clint.”

The call is harsher this time, nonetheless confused but not _Steve_ so much as _The Captain_ – commanding. Clint stops walking out of instilled training, looking over his shoulder at the other man.

“What brought this on?”

He shrugs, plucks at the hearing aids in his ear-shells. “I’m not a baby-sitter, Cap. I did actually _not_ come here to train your B-Team so you can throw them to your Pet Assassin when the time is ripe.”--because he doesn’t have any doubt that this is what will happen at some point in the future; the second hearing aid is out of his ears and the hum of the place around him is replaced by white, familiar, already aggravating, static. He’s a little pissed at his morals but he can’t take these and just leave with them; his mother may not have raised him a lot, but she did her best.

The aids fall to his feet. Soundlessly.

“And I am not going to allow you to side-line me again because you think I’d be a liability in the field what with the _merely_ prototype hearing-aids Stark has cranked up.”--they’ve been heaven, he has to admit. But they’re not worth leaving his people for. “I have responsibilities now.”--he says then as he turns and meets the tense look of his former Team Leader. “And if you cannot find it in yourself to accommodate a differently-abled person in your team maybe you should consider _not_ going after Barnes just yet.”

Because he’s not a complete asshole, he doesn’t step on the hearing-aids. Who knows, it could come in handy for deaf kids out there if Stark ever got around to marketing the stuff to the right people – they’re A-rate after all.

 

-

 

 _We were worried.--_ Darcy signs as Lucky trots forward and through the doorway, butting his head against his knees and winding around his legs, sniffing in greeting, and for some reason that is all it takes for his shoulders to drop and his heart-rate to slow as he plucks one arm away from his duffel bag, pushing it into the riotous mop that belongs to the woman in front of him, pulling her close to him.

He’s missed her scent.

_We have a guest._

Clint hums. Doesn’t bother to move and drops his duffel altogether as he winds the second arm around Darcy. Peter and Kate appear in the periphery of his vision.

“You’re both horrible at the whole shadowing stuff from what I remember. We’re going to have a few drills ‘bout that.”--he mumbles into the wild crown of Darcy’s hair; doesn’t care that it’s _the kids_ who see them like that. Who see him like that. Aimee has been calling for Darcy since she’s seen him hobble around the curve into the alley to their front-door-step. Peter nods; Kate scoffs.

Clint sinks back into _home_.


End file.
